


Let Sense Be Dumb

by branwyn



Series: Compatible Damage [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: A Case of Identity, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Class Issues, F/M, Genderswap, Kidnapping, PTSD, Self-Destructive Behavior, casefic, girl!john, incest themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-16
Updated: 2012-04-11
Packaged: 2017-10-27 10:08:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 14
Words: 39,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/294574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/branwyn/pseuds/branwyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Sherlock doesn't like it when she gets kidnapped and tied up and knocked about. When she's in danger, a large portion of his magnificent brain eats itself alive with worrying for her, and that process consumes a great deal more energy than converting proteins and carbohydrates into energy."</p><p>A sequel to "The Skeleton Winter", in which Joanna Watson is still mad as a hatter. Only these days, it's not working for her quite as well as it used to.</p><p>Genderswap casefic loosely based on the AC Doyle story "A Case of Identity".</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

1.

Joanna Watson is a doctor, an ex-soldier, and the sister and daughter of alcoholics. She's known a lot of drunks in her life, so she is very familiar with the twelve-step recovery system. She has her reservations about its efficacy, but a lot of it boils down to plain common sense, and she's always been fond of common sense. Mostly because it's a great deal less common than the name implies.

She particularly likes the concept of the "moment of clarity." It's an excellent description of the instant that sometimes occurs when you've been living so madly for so long that you've lost all sense of perspective, until something happens to jar you back into your right senses. Like waking up alone in an alley with bruises you can't remember how you'd got, or looking around your flat one day and noticing that you can't see your furniture for all the empty Beefeaters bottles. (Both these things have happened to people she knows.)

Joanna, who is currently tied with her hands behind her back and her ankles secured to the legs of a plain wooden chair, wonders if she might not be having her very own moment of clarity right about now. Because, just a few seconds ago, she caught herself thinking, "you know, this chair is rather more comfortable than if he'd tied me to one of those rolling office chairs. At least this chair has proper legs, so I can keep my feet on the ground."

Joanna has preferences, regarding what sort of chairs she likes to be tied to. This is because she has _a basis for comparison derived from multiple experiences of being tied to chairs._

To make matters worse, she's _giggling_. Because it's just occurred to her that, when her kidnapper returns to the room, she could, if she chose, engage him in conversation on points of legitimate mutual interest. _"Do you usually use fishing line, or have you ever experimented with zip ties? The fishing line is more uncomfortable, if that's the effect you're going for, but zip ties are really more secure. By the way, thanks for hitting me with the back of your hand, instead of your fist. The ring you're wearing is definitely going to leave a mark, but there's less chance of fracture to the zygomatic arch. Why yes, this does happen to me rather often, why do you ask?"_

Joanna giggles until the tears run down her face, which hurts her swelling eye a bit, but she can't help herself--she finds it all well and truly funny. And her hands, despite being tied behind her back, completely steady. Not a trace of a tremor.

She's honestly unsure whether it's because she goes unnaturally calm in the face of danger, or because she's so completely and utterly _bored._

*

The door across the empty room bursts open and her kidnapper tumbles in, looking wild-eyed and vicious. He's holding a gun, and it looks to be real so it probably is--he's the sort who could afford one. More worryingly, his tie is askew. She's made enough observations about his personal grooming habits by now to know that this a very serious indicator of mental upset.

"You," he snarls. "You'd better hope your boyfriend cares more about you than he does about me, or I'm going to send you back to him the fast way."

Joanna frowns at him, honestly confused and wondering if he has access to some sort of top secret teleportation device. "What way is that?"

Her kidnapper--Sir Timothy Paddington-Gore, CEO of Woollen Grady Investments--gives her the annoyed look of a criminal whose threat has just become 50% less effective for being too obscure to be understood.

"Out the window, you mouthy bitch," he says, and begins pacing back and forth.

"Oh. So the Met have arrived, have they?" She could try to comfort or placate him, play on whatever lingering vestige of chivalry he might possess, but she knows the look of a man so consumed by worry for his own dear self that anyone and anything else is fair game. No real point, there.

"Look," she tells him. "I don't expect you'll listen, but--the man who had you investigated in the first place, the man who hired Sherlock--he's my brother-in-law." That was stretching a point, but the complications of her relationships with the Holmes brothers are none of Sir Timothy Posh-Git's business. "If you give yourself up, and don't--you know, kill me or anything, I'll have a word with him on your behalf. He'll listen to me."

Sir Timothy rounds on her, and for an instant astonishment takes the place of agitated fury. "What? _You?_ Related to _Mycroft Holmes?_ "

"Oh, you know him then."

A disparaging look, as though she is being incredibly dim. "We were at school together, naturally."

Oh, _of course,_ Joanna thinks, heroically refraining from rolling her eyes. How could she have been so stupid, _naturally_ all the adolescent toffs in Britain were educated as a unit. Like grain-fed cattle, kept in a special pen, away from the common herd.

Well. Not _every_ adolescent toff. Sherlock hadn't been educated in the usual moribund institutions, so much as he'd been systematically tossed out of them all. For a moment, her heart swells with an uncomplicated comradely affection for him, and she has to choke back a second fit of giggling. That was Sherlock for you. Working class hero in a four thousand pound greatcoat.

"The DI in charge of your case is a fair bloke," she says. "He'll give you a hearing. And if you know Mycroft, then you know how he takes threats that touch on him personally. The Met's really your most painless option."

"What on earth are you babbling about," mutters Sir Timothy, peering out the window with his back to her. "Holmes is an accountant for the Home Office. I'm not afraid of a civil servant."

"-- _what?_ Oh. Right. Never mind, then." Joanna sighs, as her own attempt at a threat sinks under the weight of being insufficiently understood.

Sir Timothy Paddington-Gore is not a particularly stupid man, as far as criminals of Joanna's acquaintance go. But he isn't blazingly clever, either, despite the fact that the cost of his educational pedigree probably exceeded the GNP of several small developing countries. His embezzling had gone unnoticed for years, precisely because it was so uninspired. He'd probably still be siphoning money off his clients even now if a clever junior clerk at his firm hadn't spotted the discrepancies in his accounts and confronted him, and if he hadn't panicked and delivered her an almost-certainly-accidentally-deadly blow to the head with an engraved nameplate. Even then, he might have got away with it, if not for the fact that Mycroft had been on the verge of making that clever young clerk--Imani Patel was her name--an offer of employment. Her murder had annoyed him personally, and professionally, he hadn't been able to overlook the possibility that her death was linked to his interest in her. So he had called in a favor from Sherlock, who had pronounced the case the most mind-numbingly boring and artless murder in the history of crime, and announced Sir Timothy's guilt to the world approximately 45 seconds after walking into his office and spotting the empty place on his desk where the nameplate ought to have been.

Unfortunately, in his eagerness to have the case over and done with, it had apparently slipped Sherlock's mind that Sir Timothy's modus operandi in a crisis was to panic and bash the nearest person over the head with a blunt object--this time, a crystal vase holding a sympathy bouquet. Fortunately, he hadn't killed Sherlock, merely knocked him cold.

Unfortunately--again--when Joanna leapt to tackle him, Sir Timothy had shifted beneath her, and she had felt the barrel of a gun pressed against her stomach. She'd been forced to stand up and turn her back. Then it had been her turn to be unimaginatively bludgeoned.

About two hours later she'd awakened tied to the chair, not particularly bothered about it, because this is what passes for normal in Joanna's life these days. But it seems not to have taken Sherlock quite as long as her to recover, because clearly quite a lot has happened since she was knocked out. Sir Timothy is sweating visibly, tugging at his school tie, watching the police barricade go up around the building.

He really was remarkably lazy. He hadn't even left the office where he worked, just dragged Joanna up to a disused floor. Apparently he has some Hollywood notion of trading Joanna's life for a helicopter and a flight to Rio. Joanna, who as a soldier had once seen a helicopter actually _fall out of the sky_ for no particular reason, could have told him his faith in aircrafts was seriously misplaced.

Really, this was what came of a man who'd never had to exert himself in his whole life turning his hand to crime.

 _I mean,_ thinks Joanna, in disgust, _he hasn't even noticed there's a second entrance to this room._ Or that the UV blocked window on the far left was a reflecting surface.

In which Joanna could see the door opening, and the all-black uniforms of the hostage extraction team through the gap.

It all ends rather quickly after that. In fact, as far as kidnappings go, it's probably Joanna's shortest on record. She hasn't even lost feeling in her hands or feet by the time she's untied.

*

"You all right?" says Lestrade, who hurries into the room the moment the tactical team have bundled a writhing, red-faced Sir Timothy away to wherever he's going next. It's Lestrade who cuts through her restraints--not with a dagger concealed in an ankle sheath, as Sherlock would do, but with a plain, serviceable Swiss Army knife that comes out of his trouser pocket.

"I have never been that bored while having a gun trained on me," she tells him frankly, flexing her hands and wincing. Lestrade doesn't miss a beat, but takes her right wrist, then her left, rubbing sensation back into them with clever, callused hands.

"Oh, you were bored, were you." Lestrade places her hands in her lap and ghosts a finger over the swelling of her right eye and cheekbone.

"It ought to be a crime," she informs him, and then the giggling starts again.

Lestrade straightens up and glares down at her. "I ought to have you sectioned," he mutters.

"Sorry, sorry." She coughs a bit. "Adrenaline, you know."

"Adrenaline." His voice is skeptical.

"Yes, adrenaline. I am a doctor. Speaking of--where's Sherlock? I'd have thought he'd be here, how's his head?"

Lestrade's mouth twists, like he's having trouble forming an objective opinion about Sherlock's head. "His brother had to have him restrained to keep him from tearing off after you on his own. He'll be all right, but it was a nasty blow. Might have got something knocked loose, but it's not as though anyone would be able to tell, is it? He's down with the rest of the team, chomping at the bit."

"Oh." Joanna sobers, for real this time. "We'd better go down then."

Lestrade wordlessly offers his arm, and Joanna, finding herself a bit wobbly on her feet, accepts it. He guides her down the hall to the elevator, and they step inside.

"This is getting tiresome, you know," he says, staring at the lighted buttons that chart their progress to the ground floor. "It wasn't a month ago Martin performed impromptu surgery on you. And the pool, before that. A cat would be running short on lives, by now."

"I don't see why you're complaining," says Joanna. "It's not like it's you."

"Come off it," he grouses. "You know perfectly well--" He stops suddenly, and when Joanna looks at him she finds his cheeks have gone a bit pink.

Joanna blinks at him. "Well, look at you," she says, teasing. "That's rather sweet, Greg."

Lestrade makes a humph noise, low in his throat. "First year I knew Sherlock, I never thought he'd make it to thirty alive. In some ways, it only got worse when he got clean. I'd thought, when he met you--" Lestrade shrugs.

"What?" says Joanna, curious. She's never sounded Lestrade's opinion on her relationship with Sherlock before, and she's rather interested what they look like to him.

Lestrade takes a long moment answering. "I'd all but given up trying to persuade him to have a care for himself," he says. "You know what he's like. But I wondered if he wouldn't see it a bit differently once he had you to think about. Doesn't seem to have made much difference, though. Honestly, I'd think you egged each other on, except Sherlock goes mental when you get knocked about. He's shattered--not the sort of thing even he would let himself in for on purpose."

Joanna can't think what to say to that. She frowns at the descending lights on the button panel, suddenly impatient to be out of the elevator and out of the building.

"I worry," says Lestrade unexpectedly, still pointedly not looking at her. "S'all I'm saying."

It's Joanna's turn to feel her face grow a bit warm. "Well, I'll make a special effort in future not to get abducted. How's that?"

Lestrade snorts, just as the elevator dings open. "Believe it when I see it," he says.

They step out into the lobby together, Joanna still leaning rather heavily on Lestrade. In almost the same moment, the glass doors burst open, and Sherlock comes striding in, looking as though he's of a mind to tear the building apart with his bare hands. Mycroft follows swiftly on his heels, a grim expression on his face, as though he's only just restraining himself from catching the back of his younger brother's collar and hauling him back by the scruff, like a cat.

"Sherlock," she calls to him, because he clearly hasn't spotted her yet.

He stops dead, staring at her from across the expanse of gleaming tile floor. His face is abruptly blank. Mycroft, however, relaxes visibly, as though relieved by the prospect of not having to chase his brother up twelve flights of stair.

Joanna gives Lestrade's arm a parting squeeze, the best she can do to acknowledge the fact that they've just had a rather personal conversation. Then she walks out to meet Sherlock, who comes back to life all in a rush and dashes up to catch her by the shoulders. Once he's got her, he simply stares at her for almost a full minute. His eyes flicker from the bruise on her face to the ligature marks on her wrists and bare ankles. His fingers dig into her arms, eight points of exquisitely painful pressure that release when he takes a step closer and tugs her against his chest, resting his chin on the top of her head.

It's Joanna who reluctantly pulls back after a few seconds, because Sherlock doesn't show any signs of letting her go in the near future, and they can't hang about the lobby forever. Besides, she's acutely conscious of Mycroft studying them.

"Let me see," she says, pressing her hands to his temples and tugging his head down. He complies, which is uncharacteristic, and she wonders if the EMTs had actually risked giving him a sedative despite the knock. She cards her fingers through the mass of his hair and locates a golf ball sized lump and two sutures behind his right ear. "Well. That's lovely. Does it hurt?"

"Not anymore," he says in a low voice.

"I am assured that no lasting damage has been done," says Mycroft, who is standing just to the side with his eyes delicately averted.

Sherlock looks at him and snarls. "I _told_ you," he says. "You had no _right_ \--"

"Yes he did," says Joanna firmly. "I wouldn't have let you go running after me, either. Anyway, I'm perfectly fine, as you can see for yourself."

"You are not fine!" Sherlock doesn't precisely snarl at her, but it's a near thing. "You look horrible!"

Joanna blinks. Mycroft clears his throat pointedly. Lestrade, behind them, chokes back a laugh.

Joanna glances around at a couple of female paramedics, dithering near the door, as though uncertain whether they have the authority to come and reclaim their patient.

"Sorry, ladies, " she says, in her driest voice. "I know he's a charmer, but he's taken."

Sherlock's face screws up in a way that resembles a toddler on the verge of a tantrum. And Joanna rather suspects that, had Mycroft not chosen that moment to suggest to Sherlock that perhaps Joanna might like to have her injuries tended now, he might actually have fallen down on the floor and had one.

It probably doesn't look exactly like love to the casual observer, she thinks, sitting in the back of the ambulance as Sherlock tucks the blanket in around her. But she'll take it.


	2. Chapter 2

2.

"Tell me everything," says Sherlock, when they're back at the flat.

Joanna's sitting on the sofa, laptop propped on a cushion, checking her email. Three messages from Harry and one from Sarah, but she doesn't feel particularly like reading any of them right now. She shuts the computer and looks up at Sherlock.

Sherlock thrusts a mug of tea in her face, almost defiantly, as though daring her to comment on the fact that he's deigned to make it for once. Joanna controls the quirk of her mouth and accepts the tea without comment or thanks, as though it had simply materialized at her elbow.

"You already know everything important," she says. "After he knocked you out, he pulled a gun on me, took me upstairs, paced about like fretful nanny-goat until the police showed up."

Sherlock makes an impatient noise low at the back of his throat. "I need details, Joanna. Gun or no gun, you can't expect me to believe that you meekly permitted yourself to be made a hostage. He attacked me. You would certainly have retaliated."

"Well, I did try," she says slowly. "But once he pulled the gun out, it rather altered the situation, from a tactical perspective."

Sherlock's nostrils flare wide. "Paddington-Gore was utterly incompetent. Even holding a gun to your head, he could never have conveyed you up five floors at a forced march. You're far too clever not to have evaded him. You would have done _something_ \--faked hysterics, perhaps, playing into his expectations of womanly behavior, forcing him to get close enough for you to strike at him. That didn't happen, so obviously he incapacitated you somehow."

Joanna takes a moment to bask in the warmth of what translates to a compliment, coming from Sherlock. Then Sherlock stops, swallows, and adds, "Until I saw you in the lobby, I was certain he must have shot you."

The memory of Sherlock's face as he burst through the lobby doors rises up in Joanna's mind. He'd looked like a marble death-mask. Her stomach twists. For a second, she feels so guilty for worrying Sherlock unnecessarily that she almost wishes she _had_ been shot.

Except, no, that wouldn't actually make things any better. She's clearly still a bit high. She hopes Sherlock didn't read the thought in her face.

"Well, he didn't shoot me," she says, with a shrug. "I did tackle him, after he bashed you over the head, but then he pulled out the gun. I let him go, he made me stand up and turn around, and--next thing I knew, I woke up tied to a chair."

Sherlock's eyebrows knit together. "He couldn't have struck you across the face with enough force to render you unconscious. Your eye isn't swollen enough, and the bruise is the wrong shape and color."

Joanna's head flops back against the sofa cushion. The knot on the back of her skull gives a dull throb, like it knows its being talked about and is waving hello. "Sherlock, what's the point of going over all this? I gave a full statement--"

"You minimize this sort of thing when you give statements to Lestrade, because you don't like to upset him."

"How the hell did you know--" Joanna heaves a gusty sigh and shuts her eyes. Really, by now she ought to have learned there is no point wondering how Sherlock knows the things he knows. "Fine, yes, I do that sometimes. Because it _doesn't matter_. They'll charge him with abducting me, assuming Mycroft doesn't just lock him in a dungeon somewhere. I don't much care how many counts of assault they add to the list."

"That is not the point!" Sherlock throws his hands in the air. "I don't care what you tell Lestrade, _I_ need all of the data!"

"You have all the important _data,_ Sherlock."

"You can't possibly know that, not if you're leaving things out. Only I can judge what is trivial and what is significant."

Joanna gapes at him. "You called me clever not two minutes ago, you great pillock."

Sherlock flushes, his mouth twisting. "You are cleverer than most people, but your proficiencies are--unevenly distributed."

Joanna blinks at him, then gives a short laugh, shaking her head. "You're saying I'm intelligent in some ways and stupid in others. Funny, that's exactly what I've always thought about you."

Sherlock springs out of the armchair and begins pacing back and forth in front of the sofa. "There is an imprint three millimeters in diameter under the orbital socket of your right eye. He wore a ring on his left hand. He backhanded you. Why?"

"Because he's a criminal?"

"Joanna!"

"Oh, for God's sake." Her head is aching, she hasn't even had a chance to take a sip of her tea yet, and it's probably cold by now. "I think he used the gun to knock me out. I don't know for sure."

Sherlock freezes. "You never said--" He takes a step toward her, like he's about to go combing through her hair for the evidence.

"The paramedics looked at it," she says, holding out a hand to fend him off. "He hit me across the face later because I criticized his idiotically cliched escape plan."

Sherlock's shoulders go rigid. He stares down at her.

It's not enough to say that he looks angry. There are layers to the anger, different sorts battling it out for dominance, and it's fascinating to Joanna, because she can read almost all of them. He's angry at Paddington-Gore for compounding the sin of committing a boring crime by hurting her. He's angry at himself, for getting knocked out and not being able to stop it, furious with Mycroft for forcing him to hold still when he thought she'd been shot.

And, Joanna thinks, he's more than a little angry at her. Why, she's not entirely certain.

"You antagonized him," Sherlock says finally, his tone cold, incredulous. "Deliberately."

Ah. That's why, then. That's--rich, is what that is. When Joanna answers him, her own voice has gone distinctly chilly. "I didn't ask him to hit me, if that's what you're saying."

"You weren't trying to provoke the blow itself, though you undoubtedly saw it coming, because you moved your head to minimize the impact, which is probably the only reason you avoided a facial fracture. Why did you make him angry, what were you trying to distract him from seeing?"

Joanna is, abruptly, _exhausted_. And her head is killing her. She slumps over, elbows on her knees. "The second entrance to the room. The one the police entered by. Probably took it for a closet--it looked like one, only I saw the light through the crack. He started to pace down that end of the room, so I started--talking, to keep his attention off it."

There is a long silence. Finally, Joanna lifts her head. Sherlock's face is expressionless, immobile. There's a crease between his eyes like a line carved in stone.

She can't tell if it's disapproval or confusion or something else entirely, but Joanna decides she's lost all patience with being interrogated. "What?" she demands. "What did I do wrong? Let's have it, I'll want to know for next time."

A muscle twitches in his jaw. "Nothing," he says. There's a startling absence of imperiousness in his voice. He sounds tired, in fact, almost defeated. "You did nothing wrong."

"Glad to hear it." She doesn't have the energy to wonder why that fact should depress him so visibly. She rises wearily from the sofa. "I'm for bed, I'm falling apart. What about you, do you have a headache?"

"No." The reply is automatic, as though his mind is on other things.

"Are you lying?" says Joanna, certain the answer is yes.

He narrows his eyes, giving her a sour look.

"Oh, calm yourself. I haven't got it in me to bother you about it tonight. Just--wake me if the pain worsens abruptly."

"Physician, heal thyself."

"Cliches are below you, Sherlock."

Sherlock opens his mouth. Then he tosses his head and stalks off toward his bedroom. Not, Joanna is certain, to do something sensible, like sleep, but so he can get his dramatic exit in before hers. He'll probably be back out as soon as he hears her climb the stairs.

For once, Joanna doesn't care. Sherlock can saw away at the violin until dawn for all she'll notice. She's going to sleep like a rock. It's one of the few benefits of having been bashed over the head with one.

*

Joanna doesn't sleep. It's Sherlock's fault, of course, but it's got nothing to do with his violin playing.

The events of the day have left her exhausted, but not unduly anxious. It isn't trauma from having been abducted that's chasing away rest. It's all the talking that came after--not just the sortie with Sherlock a few minutes ago, but the conversation she had with Lestrade before that.

Joanna's known for awhile that Sherlock cares deeply for her--maybe as deeply as he cares about anyone. She's certainly his best friend, which means something more to him than it does to most people. And they've kissed, which probably means the relationship deserves a new label, except they never really talked about it or did anything more afterwards, and eventually Joanna decided it didn't matter. What does matter is that Sherlock is remarkably transparent, to anyone who knows him well. She knows she's the most important person in his life, which is--well, a bloody honor, really, considering what she is, and what he is. Not that she thinks she's anything too shabby, a doctor and a captain in the RAMC, but Sherlock is something unique. She'd be an idiot to feel anything but privileged to be such a large part of his life.

The drawback to being the most important person in the life of a strangely fragile lunatic genius is that Joanna possesses a unique power to upset him. She tries not to do it on purpose, though the temptation can be overwhelming when he's having a strop, but, as Lestrade so obligingly pointed out during their conversation in the elevator, she seems to do it by accident quite a lot.

Sherlock doesn't like it when Joanna gets kidnapped and tied up and knocked about. Joanna doesn't exactly enjoy it, but she's not so much of a hypocrite as to pretend she wouldn't rather be in her position than Sherlock's. She knows what it's like to have people depend on her for their lives, and it's harrowing. Still, she has always been good in a crisis, always been able to maintain calm, to postpone the emotional reaction until it won't get in the way of her work.

Sherlock--isn't like that. If Joanna becomes cool in a crisis, Sherlock heats up like a kettle until the steam comes out of his ears. Which works for him, obviously, but that sort of pressure is always dangerous. He needs certain conditions in order to operate at maximum efficiency--he doesn't even eat when he's on a case, _digestion_ throws him off balance.

Joanna is a part of Sherlock's work, he's said so a hundred times, but the fact of the matter is that she also interferes with his work. When she's in danger, a large portion of his magnificent brain eats itself alive worrying for her, which is maddening all by itself, but when she considers that it also makes him slower about solving the case, getting her out of her danger--it's an absolutely devilish paradox. And she knows Sherlock hates it. Not enough to breathe a hint that she should stay behind when he goes out on cases, because that would be like a normal couple deciding to live in separate houses. But enough to shatter him, according to Lestrade.

Obviously, the work they do is dangerous. Sherlock has been known to get himself into hot water, so it's not like it's just Joanna, muddling up his thinking. But statistically speaking, if there's trouble in a case, Joanna does seem to find herself in it rather more often. She can think of any number of logical reasons for this, but the fact of the matter is that Sherlock is, ordinarily, very good at avoiding things he has a distaste for. Such as housework. Yogurt. Anderson. Mycroft, in his meddling moods.

Sherlock goes mental when she's in danger. _Not the sort of thing even he would let himself in for on purpose._ So why does it _keep happening?_

When Joanna puts the question to herself like that, she becomes aware of a shadow behind the thought--a shadow shaped vaguely like an answer, but an answer that's much deeper and darker than anything she has the nerve to face up. At least tonight.

As daylight begins creeping in through her window, she rolls over, punches her pillow into a different shape, and forces her eyes to stay shut. And not think anymore.

It isn't easy to get herself to sleep by sheer willpower but she manages eventually.

*

"Better make a whole pot, this morning," says Sherlock, swooping into the kitchen as Joanna sets about making her tea. "We've a visitor coming, a client. You'll just end up offering her tea anyway, a pot is more efficient."

"What, you've got a case?" Joanna glances over her shoulder. Sherlock has changed clothes, but she knows he hasn't slept. "Since when? And do we have a teapot that hasn't, at some point in its existence, been used to contain corrosive chemicals?"

"Mrs Hudson left one, I think," he says. "I had the email a few days back, forgot about it until an hour ago."

"Who's the client?"

"Teenage girl. University student. Got a missing boyfriend."

Joanna frowns into the cupboard as she extracts the tea. "I thought you didn't care for missing persons cases."

"Hmm." That noise, coming from Sherlock, is the verbal equivalent of a frown. He's probably surprised she knows; they've never discussed it, but over time Joanna has noticed that Sherlock actually does have criteria other than _boring/not boring_ that determine what cases he accepts through the website. Missing persons, like cases involving sexual violence, rarely end up on his docket, whereas blackmailers, and people who prey upon the elderly, are likely to catch his attention even if they aren't as interesting as they should be.

Joanna sets the kettle on the range.

"Something particularly interesting about this one?" she prompts, when he doesn't say anything more.

"It's--an experiment."

"Really? How?"

Sherlock takes a few seconds longer to answer than is entirely normal. "I've a theory about it."

"You're not going to tell me, are you."

"Hmm."

Joanna rolls her eyes. "You know what, you finish up here. If we're having someone in, I want to shower."

She expects Sherlock to balk, out of habit if nothing else. To her surprise, he appears quietly at her elbow and starts measuring out tea leaves.

"Probably for the best," he says idly, as she stares at him. "You look like you just stumbled out of a casualty ward."

"What the hell, Sherlock--"

"Impressionable young girl," he says smoothly. "Don't want to scare her off."

The teapot Mrs Hudson is large and heavy. Joanna wonders whether, if she stood on a chair and dropped it on Sherlock's head, she could persuade Lestrade it had been an accident.

"Not unless Lestrade is a believer in the supernatural, and I don't think he is," says Sherlock, plucking the thought from her head. "Dimmock, on the other hand, might be persuaded it was poltergeist activity."

Joanna presses a hand to her eyes and stalks from the room. In the shower, at least, no one will hear her banging her head against the wall.


	3. Chapter 3

3.

Joanna enters the sitting room half an hour later, having showered and taken pains to make herself look as unlike the victim of a recent crime as she can possibly manage at short notice.

She finds their client seated at the end of the sofa, and Sherlock sitting in the armchair, studying the girl with sharp-eyed concentration. She is small and slight, with dishwater blonde hair falling in artless wisps around her chin. She looks younger than she is--too young, Joanna would have thought, to be in university. Her skin is very pale, and there are deep shadows under her large, dark eyes.

Joanna notices that her hands are clasped around a pair of folded spectacles. The lenses are tinted dark, though not quite as dark as sunglasses. Her head turns in Joanna's direction when she opens the door, but she doesn't meet Joanna's eyes.

"Hi, hello," says Joanna. "Hope I'm not interrupting."

"This is my flatmate and colleague, Doctor Joanna Watson," Sherlock says, as though she had arrived in response to his summons. "Joanna, this is Mary Sutherland."

"Hi," says Mary, in a soft voice.

"Nice to meet you, Mary." Joanna looks down at the table, which holds books, papers, and two empty, dirty mugs. "Sherlock, where's the tea?"

Sherlock raises his eyebrows. He glances fleetingly toward the door. Joanna sighs profoundly, and troops into the kitchen to fetch it. She returns with the pot and three mugs on a tray.

"How long ago was the surgery?" says Sherlock suddenly, and Joanna looks up, confused, until she realizes he isn't speaking to her.

"Two months ago," says Mary, lifting a hand to touch the side of her face. "How did--oh. The specs, right?"

"Cataracts?"

"Yeah. I'm loads better than I was. Should be completely right in about another week."

"Interesting." Sherlock's knees are tucked up against his chest, his hands folded under his chin. "You live at home?"

"I've had to. Surgery was right at the start of term. Had to drop out, so I couldn't stay in the dormitory. I'll be back in the spring, though."

Joanna is just about to pour the tea when Sherlock straightens his legs and pops out of the chair. "Have a seat, Joanna, let me do the honors."

She stares at Sherlock as he snatches the mug from her hand. It's white, and has a picture of a teddy bear in a lab coat and stethoscope on the side (not Joanna's fault, present from an old lab partner). He dashes tea into it, somehow managing to look reckless without spilling a drop. "Sugar?" he asks Mary, holding up the mug.

"Not for me," she says. Sherlock extends the cup to her, and she reaches for it. "Thanks."

He returns to his seat--without pouring tea for himself, or offering to do so for Joanna. She shakes her head and claims a cup for herself, before settling into the sofa at opposite ends with Mary.

"Soo." Sherlock drags the word out. "Your boyfriend, Miss Sutherland. Edward Darcy. Two days ago, you tried to file a missing person's report on him, but the police could uncover no records of his existence--no birth certificate, no credit cards, no driving license. They believe he was intending to defraud you, which hypothesis I would be inclined to support, but you're convinced he's honest, and in trouble. So tell me why."

"Because he told me ages ago that Edward Darcy wasn't his real name," she says. "He warned me, in the beginning, that there was trouble in his past, and it might come looking for him one day, and that if he ever disappeared I wasn't to think it meant he didn't love me anymore." Tears glint in her eyes, but she keeps her voice steady. "Sorry. God, I'm so worried."

"What sort of trouble was he in?" Joanna cuts in, feeling sorry for the girl, and having an idea her voice might have a more steadying effect than Sherlock's.

"He never said straight out."

"Yeah, but you must have had some idea." Joanna gives her a small, sisterly, 'isn't it funny when men think they can keep things from us' sort of smile. Although, now she comes to think of it, she has no idea if Mary can see her face clearly or not, what with the post-surgical eyes.

"I thought maybe--drugs, at first." Mary shrugs. "I couldn't think what else could it could have been. But then he started talking about us going abroad when I finished school, describing all the different countries he'd seen, adventures he'd had, and I wondered--" She pauses, clearly struggling.

"You thought MI6." Sherlock's voice is just a degree or two on the polite side of contemptuous. "Or similar."

"Yeah. I know it sounds daft, but it must happen, right?"

"No doubt." Sherlock glances at his mobile, on the table to his left. His nostrils flare, and Joanna knows he's wondering whether he's going to have call Mycroft into this, whether helping this girl is worth owing his brother a favor. "You have pictures of your missing friend, I hope?"

"Oh, yes." Mary bends down to snatch up her handbag, plucking out a mobile. She holds it close to her face for a few seconds as she thumbs over the screen, then passes it to Joanna.

Joanna looks down and sees a tall man in a yellow windbreaker and a bicycle helmet. She can barely see his face, though she can see the well-developed musculature in his legs. "Oh, he's fit, isn't he?" says Joanna, smiling. "Well done, you."

Mary gives a sniffle that turns into a tiny laugh. Sherlock narrows his eyes at Joanna and walks over to the couch, snatching the phone away from her. He flicks forward and back through the pictures. "Are there no pictures of the two of you together?"

"No," says Mary, a new note of valiantly restrained misery in her tone. "There were some on his phone, but he kept forgetting to send them to me."

"He looks to be considerably older than you."

"He's 28," she says, sounding a bit defensive. "Ten years."

"When and where did you see him last?"

"At my house. My mother and step-father's house, I mean. He came by for a few hours while they were out, and he was gone before they got back at 7. I called him the next day and he didn't answer. He hasn't answered since, though I keep trying."

"Did the police go around to his flat?"

"I--" Mary falters. "I don't know where he lives. I met him just after my surgery, you see, and at first I didn't get around very well on my own, so he always came round to mine--always when my parents were out, because that's a row I won't be having, now I'm eighteen." A bitter look crosses her face, incongruous on her worn, delicate features. "They never let me date when I was younger. They still try to stop it, but I do as I like now."

Joanna almost makes some sort of conciliating remark about it being natural for parents to be protective of their daughter, but she stops herself. There's something more than adolescent frustration in Mary's expression, Joanna knows from experience that it doesn't always pay to assume parents have the best intentions.

"How exactly did you meet this Mr Darcy so soon after your surgery without your parents interfering, if you weren't able to get around on your own?" says Sherlock. He's leaning forward slightly, a suddenly sharp note in his voice that draws Joanna's eyes to him.

"Well," says Mary, "I met him at home, actually. He's a bicycle messenger. He was on our street, looking for number four, and he thought it was us, 'cause our number fell off and never got replaced. I was taking a walk around the neighborhood a few days later, and he passed me on his bike, but he stopped when he recognized me, and we got to talking." She flushes, her cheeks a brilliant pink. "I know it sounds stupid, but I didn't realize he was coming by on purpose to see me, at first. I never know when boys are flirting with me."

"Oh, I was that way for years," says Joanna, sympathetically. "Nothing to be ashamed of. Just weeds out the blokes whose hearts aren't in it."

Mary smiles, gratitude in her expression.

"Whatever Mr Darcy's other shortcomings, failing to court you wholeheartedly seems not to have been one of them. Until his disappearance, at least." Sherlock is still leaning forward. His face is a mask, and his voice is tense. Joanna frowns at him, but he isn't looking at her.

"Mr Holmes." Mary wraps her arms around the purse in her lap, her shoulders hunched. "Do you think you can find him? Or do you think--do you think he's dead? If you have an idea at all, please tell me. Not knowing is worse than anything."

A look crosses Sherlock's face that Joanna is certain she's never seen him wear before. He looks uncertain, and miserably uncomfortable. It's odd, Joanna thinks, how her own anxiety responses have been conditioned to respond to Sherlock's; she is beginning to feel terribly uneasy herself, for no particular reason, just because he looks like that.

He springs to his feet and walks to the desk, leaning over his laptop and tapping at the keys. The glow of the screen conceals his expression. "I can't possibly form a conclusion until I know more," he says, in a curt voice that might be hiding anything from exhaustion to hysteria. "I'll need to visit you at home, where you last saw your boyfriend."

"Of course," says Mary, looking slightly startled. "Now?"

"No. Soon. I'll text you. Write down your address before you go. And your parents' names."

"All right."

Sherlock jabs the keyboard twice, viciously, then spins on his heels and stalks from the room. He gives them neither parting glance nor word, and Mary and Joanna are left looking at each other.

Mary blinks, confused. "I--I suppose I'll just leave it with you, then," she says.

*

"Sherlock." Joanna raps on his bedroom door. "Mary's gone. I know you only came in here to put her off."

Silence follows for a few seconds. "I did nothing of the sort," he says, in a muttering voice, just loud enough to be heard.

Joanna hesitates, then tries the door. It isn't locked. She pushes it open tentatively, and sticks her head inside. "Can I come in?"

"If you must."

Sherlock is stretched out on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. "What's going on?" she says. "It looked like you--took a bad turn or something, while Mary was talking." Joanna shoves some books aside and perches on the edge of the mattress, looking down at him over her shoulder. "Do you--I mean, have you figured out what happened to her boyfriend already?"

Sherlock shuts his eyes. "Perhaps."

Joanna waits. Sherlock doesn't ordinarily need prompting to hold forth on how terribly obvious the solution is and how incomprehensibly thick she's being to not see it for herself. "Want to tell me?" she says finally.

Sherlock exhales windily. "No."

"Really?" She frowns at him. "Why?"

"Because I don't--" He shuts his mouth. "I'll need you to come with me, to the girl's house."

"Of course," says Joanna, her frown deepening. "You normally just take it for granted I'm coming along. What's different, why's it especially important that I be there?"

"Because I was never an eighteen year old girl," says Sherlock heavily. "I will need your observations, or I might overlook something of importance."

"Right." Joanna would normally be warmed by the implied compliment, but Sherlock's palpable unease is getting under her skin. She stands up and straightens her blouse. "You're obviously busy cogitating, so I'll just leave you to it, shall I?"

She's halfway through the door when Sherlock calls her back. "Joanna."

"Yeah?" She pauses and looks back at him.

He continues to stare at the ceiling for another few seconds, as though it is particularly important that he not meet her eyes. When he does speak, Joanna has the feeling that he isn't saying what he'd originally meant to.

"I wish I'd never taken this case," he mutters, as though to himself.

Joanna's hand tightens on the doorframe. "If I ask why, you're probably just not going to bother answering me properly. Again."

"The timing is--inconvenient."

She sighs. "I don't have any idea what that means and you know it."

Sherlock pushes himself upright and scoots back against the headboard, legs crossed, elbows on his knees. "What were you like at that girl's age? How did you see the world? How did you look at other people? At your parents, your friends? At men?"

All the thoughts in Joanna's head scramble together suddenly, like the contents of a blender after someone's pressed the button for puree. "I--"

At last, Sherlock turns his head. When his eyes meet hers, his mouth tightens.

"Contrary to what everyone seems to think, I don't announce every thought that passes through my mind," he says. "I generally know a great deal more about a person than I let on to knowing."

"I'm aware of that." Joanna's throat is tight. "Why do you think I get so annoyed when you do blurt things out inappropriately? If I thought you couldn't help yourself, I wouldn't be angry."

"But I _can't_ always help myself." He sounds petulant, almost bitter. "That girl, Mary Sutherland. She said that nothing is worse than not knowing, but that's absurd. No one actually means that. Except me. I always feel that way, I always want to know. Everybody else _says_ they want to know, but then I tell them, and it becomes obvious that they don't, really. Unless they do, and how am I meant to know the difference, when all I have to go on is their word, and not even they know what they really want?"

"Are you--" Joanna feels as though she would rather like to sit down again, but the air in the room between her and Sherlock seems to have grown suddenly thick, like treacle, as though she would have trouble moving through it. "Are we still talking about Mary Sutherland?"

Sherlock's jaw tightens, and he stares at the wall ahead of him, looking almost angry. Which is ironic, because Joanna suddenly knows just how he feels.

"If you're trying to say something, you're going to have to actually say it," she tells him, in a tight voice. "I'm not a bloody mind-reader."

"Young girls," he says, his voice rumbling low. "Just old enough to have lost the protected status of children, but not yet sophisticated enough to fend off the predations of clever adults. Our girl, our client, probably everyone she knows likes her. She hasn't got any real enemies, these girls never do. Mary Sutherland has something far more dangerous in her life."

Joanna forces herself to breathe steadily. In for four beats, hold for four beats, out for four beats, repeat. In a minute or so, the breathing will bring her heart rate back down, and her head will stop spinning.

"What's that, then?" she says. "What's more dangerous than an enemy?"

Sherlock's face tightens. "An admirer."

The silence is absolute. Joanna tries, and finds she can't actually move her legs. Eventually, Sherlock looks at her again, and, as though his eyes are mirroring the contents of her brain, she can see him thinking of Philip Martin. Of Moriarty.

"He isn't more dangerous than us." Her mouth is dry. She's amazed her voice is steady.

Sherlock's eyes widen for a fraction of an instant. Then, moving so fast that Joanna nearly yelps in surprise, he uncoils himself, plants both feet on the floor, and walks up to her in the doorway. He comes to stand so close to her that she has to tilt her head back in order to see his face.

He does nothing but look at her for a moment. Then he presses his hands to the sides of her face and kisses her, hard. It lasts just a few seconds, and then Sherlock is gone, through the sitting room. She hears his feet, striking hard against every other step of the staircase beyond, and then the house-jarring thud of the front door slamming shut.

When Joanna can move again, she doesn't go any farther than Sherlock's bed. She sits in the place on the mattress that's still warm from his body. Comfortable in her solitude, when the tears come, she doesn't bother trying to hold them back.


	4. Chapter 4

4.

Joanna texts Mycroft an hour later.

On the rare occasions she's ever needed to reach him, she's always phoned, because she remembers Sherlock saying that Mycroft prefers talking to typing. But she doesn't want him drawing her out, doesn't want to have to strain herself evaluating Mycroft's tone of voice, or worry what hers is giving away.

 _Has S. ever requested or have you ever shown him files on me, NHS or otherwise?_ she types.

She hesitates before sending it, fully aware that if there is the slightest chance Mycroft hasn't already read whatever files might exist in Joanna Watson's name, she's just ensured that he will do so at his earliest convenience. But that's--fine, really, she doesn't care, she's grown used to the fact that her life is an open book to the British government. Mycroft might have some odd affection for her, might be protective of her for Sherlock's sake, but he's hardly going to distress himself over something that's well past mending.

It's only Sherlock who bleeds when she's cut.

Mycroft's answer comes thirty seconds later. _He would never deign to ask, nor would I offer without serious incentive. May I ask what prompted the question?_

Joanna relaxes a little when she reads this. It's better than she expected, it means that anything Sherlock knows about her is general, not specific. She can tolerate that, as long as she doesn't have to have any conversations about it.

 _Nothing,_ she replies. _Just curious._

Mycroft texts her again about ten minutes later. Just enough time, she imagines, for him to have called up certain information and skimmed it, and probably formed a conclusion. _If he is offensively intrusive, I would be happy to have a word with him._

 _Really don't see that helping, but thanks,_ she says, and turns her phone off.

Joanna slumps back onto Sherlock's bed and stares up at the ceiling. It's a bit like looking through his eyes, what with all the time he spends here, staring up at nothing in particular, focus trained inward.

If their positions were reversed, if Joanna were the one with brilliant powers of deduction and Sherlock the one with murky secrets he didn't want dragged out into daylight, what would she see and know about him that she would be reluctant to say aloud?

 _Never got on with his family. Gets defensive when his mother is mentioned, but he never mentions her himself, or his father, so they're dead or he's not on speaking terms with them. Resents his brother, but at least they do talk. Mycroft's rather protective of Sherlock, considering he's an adult and quite dangerous in his own right. Might just be habit, because he's older, or might be something else--guilt? Sherlock's life was a bit of a mess up to five or six years ago, cocaine will do that, although something must have driven him to it in the first place. He doesn't show any particular symptoms of trauma, though, I'd have spotted that. Both brothers are public school, and with the age difference Mycroft wouldn't have been home much when Sherlock was growing up. Perhaps they were close, and when Mycroft went to school Sherlock felt abandoned, alone, perhaps their parents didn't understand him, weren't quite as bright as their sons, that does happen. So an unhappy childhood. Not shocking, Sherlock isn't exactly blissfully contented as an adult. Doesn't talk about it because he thinks it's all irrelevant, probably deleted as much as possible._

Joanna thinks her observations are sound, but they don't lead to any specific conclusions. More people than not have unhappy childhoods, she suspects, particularly clever people. She can't infer anything specific from the knowledge. And she's not quite sure any of that would qualify, in Sherlock's eyes, as sufficiently taboo to prevent him blurting it all out, if he were the one making the deductions.

She switches gears, and starts imagining what Sherlock might see in her that even he would recognize might earn him a smack in the face if he started speculating on it publicly.

 _You don't talk about your childhood either, do you, Joanna?_ She imagines Sherlock sitting in his chair, peering at her from across the room, fingers steepled under his chin. _You undoubtedly have your reasons. It's always a bit unusual for a woman to join the army, particularly an educated woman with an option for a sound career as a doctor in civilian life. You must have been running from something, but why the army, why not Medecins sans Frontiers or the like? Your arguably unhealthy appetite for risk is also unusual in a woman and begs for explanation. You possess definite trauma indicators, but of course there's always Afghanistan to blame for that. You avoid your alcoholic sister, but Harry doesn't avoid you, so the resentment only goes one way. You say you never got on, so it isn't entirely the drinking, you blame her for something that happened long before the drinking started. Your not having any family portraits on display is also suggestive, though again, you cling to certain military habits, still make your bed with hospital corners, keep your room bare of knickknacks and frippery. And then there is the extremely interesting fact that you stare down the mouth of your own gun on a recreational basis. I'd say an unstable childhood was really the least of it, wouldn't you, Doctor?_

Joanna shudders, and sits up on the bed. Take all that insight and multiply it by twenty, and probably only then would she have an accurate idea how much of her past Sherlock's accurately deduced.

The question isn't really, how much does Sherlock know about her, because the answer is, undoubtedly, "nearly everything." The question is, why is he so uneasy about it now, after a year of them living together? Mary Sutherland, whose case he wishes he'd never taken, seems to have something to do with it, though Joanna certainly can't see any similarity between herself and a doe-eyed university student with a missing boyfriend. And it's more than a bit out of character for Sherlock to say something like that in any case. He wasn't flouncing about, declaring that boring crimes were beneath his attention; if the case were merely boringly simple, he would have told Mary whatever conclusion he'd arrived at and booted her unceremoniously from the flat. Instead he seems to feel obligated to pursue the matter, despite his feelings, which must mean he thinks the girl is in some kind of trouble or danger she won't be able to get out of without his help. But why should that make him personally uncomfortable?

No. Joanna blinks. It isn't just the case--she, Joanna, is the one making Sherlock uneasy. It's clear enough in retrospect: he'd refused to tell Joanna what he was thinking about Mary's situation, which is unheard of, because he never misses the chance to show off. For some reason, he's afraid how Joanna will react when she finds out whatever it is he's not telling her. But at the same time, he particularly wants her to be part of the investigation, so he must intend for her to find out eventually, though the idea seems to trouble him.

That explains part of why he's acting strangely, at least. Sherlock probably doesn't have much experience with internal conflict, doesn't know how to manage it. That might be why he bolted from the flat, to walk it off, distract himself.

Why he felt the need to kiss her before he ran off, she's not prepared to wonder at the moment. Lack of experience with internal conflict is not one of Joanna's problems, but it doesn't mean she prefers to dwell on it.

*

As uncomfortable as the afternoon has been, when Joanna looks back on it all much later she will be able to point to the following afternoon as the moment in which everything starts to slide incontrovertibly and inexorably downhill.

Sherlock doesn't return until late in the night, long after Joanna's already gone to bed. He's actually asleep when she wakes up, huddled in a ball on the sofa, and she does her best to move about quietly so as not to wake him. She has a shift at the surgery that morning, so she goes into work, and her day is really quite normal until about three, when Sarah asks her to come to her office for a chat.

Joanna stumbles out of the clinic, feeling rather numb, an hour later. She skips the tube and walks the entirety of the distance back to Baker Street, and by the time she reaches the flat she is limping, her right leg and both her feet in rebellion against the rest of her body. She opens the door, her eyes feeling unusually dry and wide, and drags herself up at the stairs as gracefully as she can manage. Which is not particularly graceful at all, apparently, because Sherlock is waiting for her at the door when she gains the landing.

"You're limping," he says, eyes narrowed at her. "What is it, what's happened?"

Joanna briefly weighs the merits of keeping him in the dark so she can lick her wounds in private without being subjected to opinions and commentary that will not, necessarily, be calculated to bring her the most comfort. She moves past him wordlessly, into the kitchen, and goes about making tea, her actions pleasantly thoughtless and automatic.

Sherlock follows her and stands, watching her, from the other side of the table. When she puts the kettle on to boil, he says, "You were sacked."

"Well spotted," says Joanna, beyond the capacity for surprise.

"Why?" Sherlock sounds strangely annoyed. She'd thought he might secretly be a bit pleased by the knowledge that her attention would be undivided for a bit until she found other work.

"Turned off my mobile yesterday, so no one was able to reach me to ask where I was when I didn't turn up for the shift I'd forgotten about." She speaks in the flat voice she'd reserved in the army for making casualty reports, her tone matter-of-fact and emotionless. "Sarah was very sympathetic when she saw the state of my face, she seemed willing to assume I'd skived off because I needed the recovery time, but the other partners felt I'd been excused on those grounds too often already." Joanna fishes in the cupboard for a clean mug. "Now I think of it, they've probably been waiting for me to slip up ever since Martin used the clinic to stage my kidnapping. Bit of a liability, one of your doctors being prone to bleeding all over your nice clean floors." She shuts the cupboard, rather too loudly. Perhaps her voice wasn't quite so expressionless after all.

Sherlock is quiet for several seconds, as Joanna pours the water over the tea bag. "I'll call Mycroft," he says, his voice tight. "He'll see that you're reinstated. Assuming you wish to continue working with idiots. He'll find better for you, if you want."

"They're not idiots, Sherlock," Joanna snaps, without turning to look at him. "Their reasoning is perfectly sound. In their position I might sack me too. My mind's never properly on the work. I'm like a kid at uni who misses half the lectures and stumbles into the other half on no sleep, still drunk from last night's party. I was never like this before. I'm always being pulled in opposite directions. I _am_ a liability. And I don't want a job handpicked for me by your brother, he interferes with my life quite enough as it is."

Strange, but she can almost feel Sherlock blinking at her, see the look on his face, equal parts confusion and annoyance.

"You needn't concern yourself about the rent this month," he says finally. "I already gave it to Mrs Hudson out of Mycroft's retainer for the Paddington-Gore affair."

"I didn't think Mycroft paid you, except in threats to elevate your condition."

"I've informed him that if he utters the word 'knighthood' in my hearing again, I'll defect to North Korea."

Joanna is momentarily distracted by visions of the Holmes sibling rivalry played out on a global scale, then forcibly diverts herself from the resulting vision of apocalypse. "Well, money is more useful than titles, if you can't have both." She carries her tea into the sitting room and plops down heavily in a chair.

Sherlock follows her, but instead of sitting at the desk to hunch over his laptop, of throwing himself down on the sofa to stare at the ceiling, he stands in the middle of the room, frowning at her and looking a bit awkward. "Are you all right?" he says, when she lifts her eyebrows at him inquiringly.

"Yes, fine," she says. "No point working myself into a state. Can't be helped, now." She drinks her tea. "Have you arranged when we're going to Mary Sutherland's yet?"

He opens his mouth, then shuts it again, his lips becoming a thin line. "Tonight," he says. "After seven, when her parents will be home."

"Why do you want to meet the parents? They never saw the missing bloke, did they?"

Sherlock turns his back suddenly, walking over to his computer. "It is a capital mistake to theorize in advance of one's data."

"What do you mean, in advance of the data? She already gave you that datum, she said he only came around when they were out because they didn't like her dating."

"My own mother always gave me to understand that children were never as good at keeping secrets as they believed they were."

"Yes, well." Joanna props her bad leg up and leans back in the chair. "That's just one of the intimidation tactics they teach at Parenting School, isn't it."

Sherlock glances at her sharply over his shoulder, then looks away again. "Perhaps. I want to see them in any case." He lets loose with a flurry of typing, then stops. "Those snaps of the boyfriend, on Mary Sutherland's phone. She said he was 28, did he look it to you?"

"Well, yes, I suppose," she says. "Why, do you think he lied about his age?"

"Considering he lied about his name and was clever enough to secure himself against the damage of her discovering that fact by telling her he'd done so, I see no reason to assume anything he told her was the truth."

"He could be a bit older, I suppose. There weren't any close shots of his face, though, and that's really the only thing that would give it away."

"Yes. No clear pictures of his face, no pictures of the two of them together. No physical evidence whatever, in fact, to prove that he was anything more than a story made up by a lonely girl."

"What?" Joanna frowns. "Is that what you think happened? You think Edward Darcy doesn't exist?"

Sherlock pauses, fingers hovering over the keyboard, frowning at the monitor.

"That," he says, resuming typing, "is exactly what I think."


	5. Chapter 5

5.

As seems to have become standard procedure over the last few days, Sherlock declines to elucidate his very interesting comment about the potential imaginary status of Mary Sutherland's boyfriend, or to say anything else about the case, for the rest of the afternoon.

Joanna passes the hours until evening lying on the sofa in the sitting room, staring at the smiley face on the wall. Her brain is numb and sluggish with shock and a hundred stinging little thoughts she's refusing to entertain just at the moment, and she barely marks the minutes that tick by. She watches the light that filters in through the windows as it dims and darkens. The tea she'd made when she first came home sits on the floor, stone cold and untouched, despite being in easy reach of her hand. 

Sherlock is nearby, working from his armchair with his laptop perched on his knees, and though he mutters to himself from time to time, and though Joanna twitches involuntarily every time he shifts in his seat, they don't speak to each other. They also don't retreat into their own rooms, which is probably just as telling. 

If she had the energy to get off the sofa, Joanna thinks, she'd probably be upstairs with her gun-cleaning kit, which she turns to the way her had mother turned to knitting in times of stress, the way Harry turns to the drink. Repetitive physical activities that employ muscle memory and require no higher thought, lulling the Watson women into the altered mental states they apparently require in order to get through their lives. The thought possesses a unique power to irritate her; the one single thing Joanna has ever wanted for her life was that she not end up anything like her mother or her sister. And yet, the irritation only made her wish harder for the reassuring weight of the firearm in her hand.

Joanna's head comes up off the Union flag pillow wedged behind her. She thinks about climbing the stairs to her room. But her bad leg gives a dull throb, and she sighs from between her teeth, head falling back into position.

"Want me to get it?" says Sherlock.

Joanna bites back the first four or five things she wants to say in reply. Not because she doesn't want to snap at him, but because she's had her absolute fill of being patronized today and she wants to make _him_ blink in surprise, for once. She processes his words for a moment, considers her body language, the way she must have telegraphed her intentions with her movements.

"You only bring me things when I'm bedridden," she says. "You're testing me."

She doesn't look at Sherlock but she knows she's arrested his attention when he stops typing. "Oh?" he says mildly. "How?"

"You know I clean my gun when I'm out of sorts. You're trying to gauge how upset I am over getting sacked."

Sherlock is silent for several seconds, and Joanna still doesn't turn to look at him, but when he speaks again there's a strange note in his voice, nothing like the irritation, or else amusement, she'd expected.

"You know, Joanna," he says, "in your own areas of expertise, you're really quite penetrating."

"Ta," says Joanna. "This is news to you, I take it."

"That I had become one of your areas? Yes." 

There's no way Joanna's going to touch that, not right now. "If you wanted to know whether I was upset, you could have just asked."

"Your self-report is rendered unreliable by your frankly annoying stoicism."

"Yeah, but still, asking's the way you're meant to go about it."

"Really?" Sherlock starts typing again. "Fine. How are you feeling, Joanna?"

"I'm good, thanks."

"Illuminating." Sherlock's voice is dry.

"I make an effort just for you." Joanna takes her mobile from her pocket and checks the time. "We should be on our way if we're supposed to be at Mary's house by 7."

"Right." He shuts the laptop with a snap.

Joanna hauls herself up off the sofa as Sherlock swings his coat onto his shoulders with a flare of the wrists more appropriate to an opera cloak than heavy-duty winter gear. She shuffles into her own coat with considerably less grace. As Sherlock starts for the door, Joanna walks after him. 

She pauses in the foyer, by the closet where her old cane is stashed. Her leg is still throbbing and she considers bringing it along. But then Sherlock pauses with his hand on the doorknob, his eyes flickering from the closet to her face. His expression darkens, and his mouth tightens.

She shoves her empty hands in her pockets and starts after him. He doesn't stop looking at her until she slips past him to the sidewalk outside. 

If he were anyone other than Sherlock Holmes she would know how to interpret that look, but she's given up on trying where he's concerned.

*

Mary Sutherland greets Joanna and Sherlock at the door of her parents' home with a look of grim determination that is explained seconds later, when a middle aged woman appears in the foyer behind her. The older woman looks like Mary, if Mary had obliterated all her natural shy loveliness with botox and hair bleach and tarty make up that can only have been applied with a trowel.

"Mr Holmes, Dr Watson, won't you please come in," says Mary, with admirable control over her tone of voice. "This is my mother, Patricia Hambleton. Mother, Mr Sherlock Holmes and Dr Joanna Watson, from London."

"Pleased to meet you," says Mrs Hambleton, in a stiff voice. Her accent is markedly different from her daughter's. Sherlock, no doubt, had figured Mary for a first-generation university student within seconds of meeting her, but even though Joanna is usually more sensible to nuances of class tension, sometimes even more so than Sherlock, it had taken her seeing this to fully understand. 

"Thank you for having us, Mrs Hambleton," says Joanna, because Sherlock, as usual, is giving the social niceties a miss. 

"You're very welcome, I'm sure," says Mrs Hambleton, as they walk into the foyer "But there was no need to go to so much trouble over--over a simple misunderstanding."

"Mother." Mary's voice, an aggrieved mutter.

"What sort of misunderstanding do you suppose has taken place, Mrs Hambleton?" says Sherlock, untying his scarf in the close, flush heat of the small house. He's about to fling the scarf onto the back of a nearby armchair, but Joanna takes it from him with a quelling look and drapes it over her arm. Sherlock's mouth tightens almost imperceptibly. "You aren't my valet," he mutters, too low for the others to hear.

"Just the usual sort," says Mrs Hambleton. Joanna can't tell if the woman is nervous or if the fluttery, nasal quality of her voice is normal for her. "Lover's tiff. I'm sure Mary's young man will come around soon enough."

"You seem rather certain of that, never having met the young man in question," says Sherlock. "Considering that your first husband left you shortly after Mary was born, I do wonder why your faith in men should be so absolute."

Mrs Hambleton's cheeks erupt crimson, and she turns a scathing look on her daughter, who opens her mouth to defend herself.

"Mary didn't tell us," says Joanna, not willing to let Mary suffer for Sherlock's--Sherlockiness. "Sherlock sees things other people don't. That's how he does his job."

"It isn't my fault that everyone overlooks the totally obvious," Sherlock mutters.

"Yes, well." Joanna hurries on, doubting that the mood will be at all lightened by Sherlock going into a monologue regarding the details of Mrs Hambleton's marital history. "Sherlock, didn't you say it was particularly important we see Mary's room?"

"Whatever for?" Mrs Hambleton frowns suspiciously at Sherlock.

 _Because that's the last place your daughter's boyfriend was seen? No, not good._ "Oh, he rarely bothers explaining anything to me," says Joanna cheerfully, hooking her fingers around Sherlock's elbow. She smiles at Mary. "Mind giving us a look?"

"Yeah, sure." Mary seems, if anything, relieved simply to have an excuse to leave the room. She leads them off down a hallway, and Joanna steers Sherlock after her. He huffs a bit, but doesn't make any attempt to extract his arm from Joanna's grip.

Mary's room is a simple affair, the bedroom of a grown child living with her parents, deliberately stripped of childish frippery and most of the personal items that would distinguish it from a guest room. There's a single bed in the center of the room, a bedside table with a lamp, a small closet, and a few tastelessly generic floral prints in frames on the walls--her mother's doing, Joanna would guess. There is, however, a substantial book collection, overflowing the single bookshelf opposite the bed, forming several vertical stacks against the wall. Mary's laptop sits open at the end of the bed, which is made up, but rumpled, as though she'd been sitting on top of the covers recently. Next to the bed are several small boxes, full of DVDs--films, TV boxed sets. 

Joanna's fully aware that there's only one deductive genius in the room, but even so her impression of the room is unusually blank. Normally, when Sherlock holds forth with his observations, Joanna feels less as though his conclusions are lightning bolts from a clear sky, and more like the final spark of a synapse that had been trying to connect in her own brain. This, though--she can't begin to see where Sherlock is going to get information in this temporary tangle of detritus. It reminds her depressingly of the bedsit where she'd lived before moving in with Sherlock, and the single suggestive feature--its blankness--is easily explained by the fact that Mary never meant to come back here after leaving for university, and intends to move out again the moment she's well enough.

"How are you getting on, Mary?" says Joanna, as the three of them fan out across the small room. "Your eyes, are they--?"

"Due for my final check up in three days," says Mary, her voice radiating satisfaction. "I can already go without the dark lenses when I'm indoors, although Mum--my mother throws a fit every time. Like I 'd want to set my recovery back by a single second." She flushes, glances at Joanna uncomfortably. "Sorry."

"Oh, it's all right. Doctor, you know. The worst patients are always the ones on the verge of being released." 

"Your step-father isn't at home," says Sherlock, forgetting to make it a question. After one brisk sweep of the room, his gaze has come to settle on the narrow bed and the rumpled sheets at the center.

"No, he's ought."

"Is he normally home by this hour?"

"Well--yeah, but tonight he went down the pub. He was here half an hour before you arrived, though."

"Was that, by any chance, the last time your mother scolded you for not wearing your tinted spectacles?"

"Ah--yes, actually." Mary sounds confused; Joanna feels the same.

"Hmm." Sherlock walks back around the end of the bed and comes to stand for a second by Joanna, who's hovering in the doorway.

"I am going to look elsewhere," he says, low in her ear. He reaches for his scarf, still draped over Joanna's arm, unwinding it leisurely. "You stay here."

"Hang on, I thought it was terribly important to see Mary's room."

"Yes," says Sherlock. He bends his head to tie his scarf, and the riot of dark curls across his forehead nearly brush Joanna's face. "Important for you to see."

"Sherlock, I've been seeing for five minutes, and all I can see if there's nothing here!"

"I told you," he says, talking faster, like he's impatient to get away. "I was never a teenage girl. Look harder. Talk to Mary. I'll be back in half an hour."

Joanna hasn't got time to do more than huff an impatient breath before Sherlock vanishes from the doorway. She watches him, striding right past Mrs Hambleton in the foyer without a word, and then out the front door. Joanna rolls her eyes to the ceiling, then turns back to Mary.

"Well," she says briskly. "You must be eager to get back to your studies. I can't think I had half so many books at your age. I like to read, but I think I was equally fond of kicking footballs and rolling in the mud."

Mary laughs a little. "I always wanted to play sport when I was little, but it didn't fit with Mother's idea of how proper girls behaved themselves."

"Certainly not," says Joanna. "Who'd be a proper girl? Still, all that reading, must have seemed like a nice, ladylike occupation for a girl quiet at home."

Mary throws herself down on the bed and hunches over her laptop, tapping idly across the keys. "They did think that. Little did they know. Never read a book in their lives, between them. Never occurred to them that reading might start me thinking, give me my own ideas about life and the world. They figured out soon enough that I wasn't turning out as they meant me to. Still not sure they ever figured out how it happened." Her smile is bitter, triumphant. "Books have been everything to me, really. I never had anything like a real education--the school I went to ranked the students by the number of their ASBO's, not their GCSE's. But I'd read everything I could lay my hands on all my life, and that was enough, as it turned out. I qualified for scholarships, so there was nothing they could do at home to stop me."

Joanna looks at her sharply. "Your parents tried to stop you going to uni?"

"They would have, if they could, but I'd sorted things out so there was nothing left to ask them for. We didn't part well, my first term. I honestly wasn't sure they'd let me stay here while I was recovering from my surgery, but they were surprisingly nice about that. At least at first. It was all a bit less nice once I'd been here awhile, but I've tried not to let it get to me. I'm just marking time till I can leave again, after all. I was fine, honestly, until Edward--" She presses her mouth shut.

"How do your parents feel about you going back to uni in a week or so?"

Mary shrugs. "Resigned, I suppose. This will sound harsh, Dr Watson, but I learned a long time ago that I had to--sort of put them in their place, you know. I told them, straight out, the day I turned eighteen, I meant to do the uni course, be a teacher, have my own life, and if they wanted to be on speaking terms with me, they'd have to accept my terms, because I was prepared to go off on my own and not give them another thought." Mary's determined little mouth wavers as she says that. "I suppose I sound terribly ungrateful."

"Not at all," says Joanna, who's beginning to feel entitled to let the professional veneer slip for a bit. "You're a clever, responsible girl. You'd a duty to live up to your potential."

Mary looks right at her for the first time and there's an expression of such unguarded gratitiude on the girl's face that Joanna nearly wants to hug her. "Thank you, Dr Watson. I don't think anyone's ever said that to me before."

Joanna smiles back. "Mind if I have a look over the library? I've always loved looking at other people's books."

"Help yourself," says Mary. "With my eyes in this state, I haven't been able to read much. But I have a lot of audiobooks. And a lot of my favorite books have been made into films, so I've been watching rather a lot of telly lately."

"Oh, yeah? Like what?"

Mary nudges the open box of DVDs closest to the bed. Joanna spares herself a moment to feel completely ridiculous--this is supposed to be detective work, really?--before she bends down a bit to have a look.

Mary's viewing tastes, it would seem, run heavily to BBC period dramas and epic romances involving mythological creatures. Joanna is suddenly just as glad Sherlock isn't present; he'd probably be able to tell which of them Joanna's seen just by looking at her, and that's a little more information than she feels he needs to possess. Some of the films and serials are distinctly girly, in a corsets-and-bonnets way, and Joanna feels that Sherlock already has enough of an advantage in this...whatever it is that's going on between them, without having his attention drawn to the fact that polysyllabic flirtation with men in long coats is just her style.

"Ooh, I quite like this one," says Joanna, drawing one of the films from the pile. 

"I do like Austen," says Mary, smiling. "Suppose I like anything involving knee-breeches, really."

"Tell me about it," says Joanna. "Anything involving Colin Firth, now I think of it." Mary laughs. "Unfair, really, every impressionable girl in the country watches the bloody thing and spends the rest of her life looking for her Mr Darcy--"

Joanna's breath leaves her throat abruptly. 

"Yeah," says Mary. "Though I always thought I'd settle for a Mr Knightley, if it came down to it. Um--are you all right?"

Joanna blinks. She must be fairly transparent if the girl who's recovering from eye-surgery can see right through her. "Yeah, I'm good, thanks. So do you watch this stuff mostly on your laptop, or do you and your mum ever have, you know, Regency Girls' Nights?"

Mary glances down. "We used to. Before--when I was younger." She shrugs. "We were a lot closer before she married Jamie."

"That's your step-dad?"

"Yeah."

"You get along with him?"

"He's okay," says Mary, with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. 

"Just okay?"

"Comes on a bit strong with the dad stuff. He's not that much older than me, so it's a bit weird. But I guess he tries to make up for my real dad walking before I knew him."

"Right." Joanna forces a smile. "Listen, I'm just going to nip out into the hall, need to text Sherlock."

Mary nods, and Joanna walks through the door of her bedroom. Her stomach is churning, and when she reaches into her pocket to take out her phone, her hand is shaking.

 _Edward Darcy = names of 2 fictional characters from Mary's favorite books and films,_ she taps out, then hits send.

The reply comes thirty seconds later. _You're done there. Walk two blocks s/e to pub called Dangling Prussian._

 _This is what you meant when you said Edward Darcy doesn't exist, isn't it?_ Joanna texts back. 

But Sherlock doesn't answer right away, and suddenly Joanna can't be in that house another second. She sticks her head back into Mary's room, promises Sherlock will be in touch with her soon, and hurries out the front as fast as she can.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that te warnings on this story have changed.

6.

 _I'm reading too much into this,_ Joanna tells herself, as she takes the pavement to the pub at a forced march. _Sherlock will set me straight. It's not what it looks like. It can't be, things like that don't happen in real life._

Joanna thinks her limp might be worse than it was coming home from the clinic; or maybe it's only the fact that Sherlock isn't here, and she's finally letting it be as bad as it really is.

She'd caught a glimpse of a wedding photograph in a frame as she passed through the sitting room the second time. She hadn't been looking for it; her eyes had simply fallen upon it. And even though Joanna's visual memory isn't normally that good, certainly wasn't much use to her in university, her subconscious mind seems to have processed the data before her conscious mind could flinch away from the implications.

In the wedding portrait, Mary and her mother are standing on either side of the groom, a handsome man at least fifteen years younger than the bride. He's wearing a broad grin, and his arms are curled tightly around the shoulders of his new wife and step-daughter. Mary's mother looks triumphant in a dress of pale gold. Mary herself is wearing a pale pink bridesmaid's dress that's just a bit too mature, a bit too sexy for her painfully adolescent figure. Judging from the set of her shoulders and her tense smile, she seems rather uncomfortably aware of it. She is, at the very most, fourteen years old.

Sherlock had asked Joanna, after Mary's visit to their flat, whether Edward Darcy really looked 28 to her in his photographs. _Ten years, not that much older,_ Mary had said, when Sherlock questioned her about the difference in their ages. _He's not that much older than me,_ Mary had said about her step-father, minutes ago, to Joanna. _It's a bit weird._

When Joanna was in Afghanistan, not long before she was shot, she'd witnessed a young soldier who'd been caught at the edge of the blast radius of an IED. He'd stood up and walked away after the explosion, completely unaware that he was missing his left arm from the elbow down. She doesn't remember if she'd seen the look on his face when he'd finally noticed his mangled limb. All she remembers is the horrified anticipation of _waiting_ for him to notice it. Right now, Joanna feels like she does whenever she wakes up from dreaming about that young soldier--sick, powerless to stop the devastation she knows is about to occur.

Poor Mary wouldn't even have the temporary cushion of denial to ease her through the shock, because she's a smart girl. She was obviously right on the verge of seeing it herself, or she wouldn't have come to see Sherlock in the first place. Whether she knows it or not, she'd come to him, not to find her missing boyfriend, but to find out where that awful, roiling feeling of _wrongness_ in her stomach was coming from. 

Joanna shudders, then tucks her chin down into the collar of her coat and marches on until she reaches the street with the pub sign out on the curb, advertising a drinks special. She turns for the door, and a hand reaches out to pluck at her sleeve. Joanna jerks, and whirls--but the hand falls away a second later, and she sees the oval of a pale face peering at her from the narrow alley between the pub and the building next door. It's Sherlock, of course. He takes a step forward to join her on the flagstone and stares down at her with a neutral, almost blank expression.

She takes a deep breath, then expels it. "Well?"

"Well what?" says Sherlock.

"You've got it all figured out, don't you? Go on, then."

Sherlock continues to study her for a moment, then averts his eyes. "I don't know that I have got it figured out," he says.

"You're joking," says Joanna flatly, because it's not possible that she got there before him, it just isn't.

"I've got an idea," says Sherlock. "But you've got something better than an idea. You _know_."

"If I know, how could you not?" Joanna's voice rises in pitch, an incredulous crescendo.

"Tell me what you found out when you talked to Mary." His voice is even, as though he hasn't noticed, or doesn't care about, the implied slight to his deductive powers.

"I didn't find anything out," Joanna snarls. "I saw her books and her DVD collection. I saw a photograph. That's what I do, I help gather information. Putting it all together, that's your department."

"Tell me about the photograph." Sherlock looks keen, suddenly.

"It's of Mary and her mother and step-father, from the wedding," says Joanna, tone clipped and terse. "Mary's about fourteen. She hardly looks any different. Late-bloomer. She could still pass for fourteen, if she tried. The husband--her step-father--he'd be about thirty-five now." Joanna swallows. "A young looking thirty-five, I should think."

"My own age." Sherlock's nostrils flare. "I've passed myself off as far younger than twenty-eight, amongst people who haven't recently had surgery for cataracts."

"You're a chameleon, though. Most people can't do what you do with disguises."

"Anyone can do anything if they're sufficiently motivated." His voice is cold, dry and detached.

"Sherlock." Joanna's irritation evaporates. She reaches up and tugs on his lapel, and Sherlock looks down at her, surprised. "Are we really saying--what _are_ we saying?" 

His eyes darken, and his mouth grows soft for an instant, as though he's heard what it is Joanna's actually asking him: _Tell me I'm wrong. Make it not real._ But Sherlock's normal haughty mask resumes its place over his features, and when he speaks again, he sounds annoyed.

"You're not this slow," he says. "You don't need me to tell you, you just don't want to say it."

"Why is it so important for me to say it?" Joanna wants to stamp her foot, or burst into tears, or choke Sherlock until he turns blue.

Sherlock bends down so that his face is close to Joanna's, the tips of their noses nearly touching. He looks into her eyes and holds her gaze, and if Joanna didn't revert to sheer, bloody-minded stubbornness as a matter of habit whenever she was challenged, she'd be backing up by now. 

"Because," he says, " _I always defer to expert knowledge._ "

Joanna flinches. Sherlock doesn't even blink. Joanna stumbles back a step, as though she's been pushed. Sherlock's hand clamps tight around her elbow. She tries to shake him off, but his grip is immovable. 

"I don't do these sorts of cases." Sherlock's voice is ragged around the edges, as though he's been under strain for a long time and is suddenly unable to conceal it any longer. "There's no logic to unravel in a crime like this, no thought or reason in it at all, just brute cunning. My skills are barely of use. I might as well be Lestrade."

If she were the slightest bit less frozen, Joanna would plant a fist in Sherlock's stomach, wrench her elbow free, and take off down the pavement. But she's caught in this moment, she'll be stuck here forever, as though she'd blundered too close to the event horizon of a black hole. 

"The moment Mary Sutherland came to us, I knew that the boyfriend was a fraud and I knew that her parents were involved. I thought at first they'd sold their daughter's virginity to the highest bidder and dressed it up like a romance so as to avoid being party to an outright rape. But you kept emphasizing certain details, nuances that would otherwise have escaped me. You made me see how out of the ordinary it was for parents to be so controlling of their grown daughter's dating habits. You credited Mary's mistrust of them as being something more than an adolescent sulk. Gradually I realized that your instincts were more valuable to this case than my skills, because you looked at Mary Sutherland--" Sherlock paused, seeming to need to catch his breath. "And you saw yourself."

This time, when Joanna jerks against his grip, Sherlock releases her, albeit reluctantly. 

"Sure of that, are you?" she hears herself say, a second later.

Sherlock blinks. He opens his mouth, then shuts it without saying anything.

"Christ." Joanna laughs, then presses her hand to her lips. "I don't have any secrets from you, do I? How long ago did you work that one out?"

The calculating look on Sherlock's face is deeply familiar, though she's never had it turned on her quite so intently before. It grounds her somehow, because they've been here so many times before, Sherlock presenting a conclusion and Joanna giving him his cue to display the mechanism of his brilliance. But he doesn't say anything. He stays quiet, studying her, as though she's a volatile chemical compound and he's not quite certain what reaction to expect.

"No, you know what, never mind. This isn't about me, it's about Mary's step-father passing himself off as a stranger so he could have sex with her." Joanna looks past Sherlock to the door of the pub. She forces herself to breathe calmly and evenly, in for a count of four, hold, out for a count of four, hold. If she's screaming, somewhere in the back of her mind, it doesn't matter, because she can keep it quiet, keep it contained as long as necessary to get the job done. "We're on the same page about that, obviously. And now, Sherlock, I need you to tell me that there is something we can do about it. Because I've been thinking for the last hour, and honest to Christ, I'm not even sure if he's broken the law. Short of dragging him into an alley and shooting him in the back of the head, I don't--"

Her voice breaks, and she goes quiet, still staring through the pub door, her eyes dry and unblinking. 

"We have two options," says Sherlock. He sounds hesitant, like he's watching closely for a response from her. "Lestrade might be able to charge him with some kind of fraud, if Mary is willing to press charges and testify. But it's doubtful. Her testimony won't be considered very reliable, and since her mother was certainly in on it--"

" _Christ_."

"--there will be conflicting testimony, which will undermine her even more. Her vision was impaired, so she can't identify him. He was careful not to appear in any photographs with her while he was pretending to be Edward Darcy. Only we can say that her boyfriend and her step-father are one and the same, and we can offer no physical evidence."

"That's it, then? What's our other option."

A smile flickers across Sherlock's face, there and gone in half a second. "I can go and fetch my riding crop."

"That isn't funny."

"It wasn't meant to be. He is clever, patient, and opportunistic. A pedophile, capable of denying his lust for his teenage step-daughter until she is past the age of consent? He might never have made his move, if not for the chance of her surgery. He's been very--neat." Sherlock shakes his head. "We can watch him. His success will make him bold. He'll rise from crime to crime until he ends up dangling from the end of a rope. Metaphorically speaking. Sooner or later, we'll have him."

"So that's our other option?" Joanna tastes bile. "Wait for him to prey on a girl who isn't quite eighteen yet?"

Sherlock shrugs. "I wasn't actually joking about the riding crop. I don't have it with me, but I think a word in his ear might have the same effect. The way he went about it shows that he fears public knowledge of his actions. If we confront him, he'll panic. It might be enough to stop him. For a time, at least."

"That's your solution? Blackmail him?" Joanna's heart is pounding in her ears. "Sherlock, we're supposed to be helping Mary. If he's clever enough to have planned all this like you said, he's clever enough to know that we can't expose him without exposing her. He'll know we'd never do that."

Sherlock looks at her and blinks. "Why wouldn't we?" he says. "What does it matter if it comes out? The girl's done nothing wrong, she's nothing to be ashamed of."

Joanna gapes at Sherlock, and only the earnest, honestly puzzled look on his face keeps her from winding up and decking him flat. "Are you serious?" she says. "Are you competely and utterly---naive?"

Sherlock frowns. 

"It doesn't matter that she's done nothing wrong! People will talk about her, complete strangers will gossip and speculate about her deepest, most painful secrets! You're the most private person I know, don't tell me you understand why she wouldn't want that."

"But if it stops him--"

"That's not up to us, Sherlock. If Mary wants it, if that's a battle she wants to fight, we can help her, but she has to make that decision for herself. If we take that choice away from her, then we've made her even more of a victim."

"But you didn't--" Sherlock stops.

"Didn't what?" Joanna narrows her eyes.

"You didn't choose it. You never exposed your father, and he died and got away with what he did to you. What if Mary never says anything? Do you want this man to get away too?"

Joanna sees stars.

Through the red mist boiling up in her vision she can see Sherlock's face, very pale, lined with concern, his mouth moving as though he's speaking. She doesn't hear a word he's saying. She feels as though she's falling backwards down a dark hole, into a past life, before she'd learned to take all her fear and helplessness and rage and convert it into courage, determination, and forward momentum. She's fifteen years old again, standing in front of Sherlock Holmes, her best friend, the man she might very well love, and he's sneering at her for being weak, for letting her father, letting a criminal, _get away_ with hurting her.

When she comes back to herself, Sherlock is saying her name. He's gripping her upper arms with both hands, shaking her very slightly.

"Off. Get _off_." Joanna shakes him and reels backwards. "Christ, you're a bastard. You don't even--Christ." She realizes she's barely breathing. She sucks down a huge lungful of air. "You really don't get it, do you? It's like how you're always saying that other people see but they don't observe. You know everything, but you don't understand anything. You're like a child, God." She totters a little, and Sherlock reaches for her again. "Don't touch me," she snaps.

Sherlock lowers his hand. He stands there, very still, looking a little smaller than he did a second ago.

"Fuck." Joanna rakes her hand over her face. "All right, you obviously need someone leading you by the hand, so this is what we're going to do. First, we're going to go in there and have a chat with Mary's step-father--what's his name, incidentally?"

Sherlock blinks at her, then clears his throat. "James Windibank."

"Right. We're going to have a chat with James Windibank. Then we're going--no, scratch that. _I'm_ going back to talk to Mary. _You_ can go home. Or wherever you like, but you're not coming near Mary again, the last thing she needs is you tearing her heart out on top of everything else she's been through."

"Joanna--" Sherlock jerks slightly. It's almost a flinch.

"Don't." Joanna squares her shoulders. "I'm going in. Come if you want."

She strides past him, towards the door of the pub. She doesn't wait to see whether Sherlock is coming or not. She doesn't hear his footsteps, but that means very little, because she can't hear much of anything past the roar of her world falling down around her ears.


	7. Chapter 7

7.

It's nearly two in the morning before Joanna returns to Baker Street alone. Her limp is the worst it's ever been, and she's done a great deal more walking than she ought. By the time she climbs the stairs up to the flat, not only her leg but her lower back is seizing up in agonizing cramps. It's all she can do to get through the door without hunching double.

Sherlock is sitting in his chair, facing her empty one. The violin is lying across his lap, the wrist and hand of his left arm curled around the neck. His fingers are depressing the strings of an unplucked chord. 

When she walks into the kitchen, Sherlock doesn't look at her right away. Then his head turns slowly, almost tentatively, to seek her out. Joanna's leaning against the table, trying to decide whether she wants to drink tea and talk to Sherlock, make tea and take it upstairs, or skip the tea altogether and go collapse in her bed. She decides on the first option, since she's going to have to talk to Sherlock eventually, she'll need tea to get through it, and as she no longer has a job, there's no point rushing off to bed. How much sleep she gets is now entirely her own concern.

She fills the kettle and flips the switch to boil. Out of habit, mostly, she heats enough water for two cups. A few minutes later she carries the tea into the sitting room. When she holds Sherlock's cup out to him, he stares at it like it's some kind of small miracle before he reaches to take it.

Joanna sits in her chair and crosses her legs, staring at the foot balanced on her knee. Not proper for a girl to sit like that, her dad used to say. He was keen on girls acting like girls, very old fashioned. It had bothered Harry more than it bothered Joanna, who'd been too busy worrying about other things.

"What happened?" says Sherlock.

Joanna blinks at him. "You don't know?"

"No." He sees Joanna staring. He huffs in annoyance. "I could make a deduction, but apparently I'm having an off day, so just tell me."

Joanna drinks her tea, which is still hot enough to scald her mouth. She puts the cup down. "Mary was--well. Devastated, to put it mildly."

"Naturally."

Joanna gives him a sharp look, but there's no mockery in his expression, just expectation. It's just as well for him, because Joanna's going to carry the memory of Mary's bone white face with her for a long, long time. "She was quiet about it, but, yeah. The damage is done. I wanted to get her out before we had to deal with the mother, but Mary lost it and started to yell at her, and her mother had hysterics. Tried to hit me. Didn't quite get there." 

"Naturally not." A hint of a smile from Sherlock this time, genuine enough that Joanna returns it.

"I helped Mary pack her things and got her down to an all night cafe so I could get some tea into her and make some phone calls. Thought I'd have to bring her back here for tonight, but I managed to find a bed for her in a good place. She'll have support there. Told her she should call us if she needs anything or decides she wants to pursue things from the police end. I'll pop round tomorrow and look in on her." Joanna drums her fingers against her knee. 

"And you find that satisfactory?" says Sherlock.

Joanna's fingers still abruptly. "What?"

"You're satisfied with that conclusion to the case."

"Satisfied really doesn't come into it, in a situation like this."

"Why not?"

Joanna fights to contain the steam that threatens to spill out of her ears, because there's no point, just _no point at all_ expecting Sherlock to get this stuff, and neither bursting into tears nor yelling herself hoarse will change that. "Are you actually asking?"

"Of course I am." Sherlock looks offended. "I seem to be discovering gaps in my professional knowledge everywhere I look these days, it's intolerable. "

"This is why you avoid cases to do with sex crimes, isn't it? You don't like the helplessness that comes with looking at a living victim and knowing that even giving her answers isn't going to fix the mess that's been made of her life."

Sherlock plucks two violin strings together, a discordant noise, a voice of protest. He stares down at the carpet. Against her better judgment Joanna softens toward him.

"Meant to say." She waits for him to look up. "Good job putting the fear of God into Windibank." 

After proving to James Windibank that they knew all about his charade, they had watched him transition from terror at having been found out, to smugness, as he reassured himself that the law couldn't touch him. In response, Sherlock had leaned over the table and succinctly outlined three different highly detailed plans for entering Windibank's home, undetectable by any security system on the market, and three different methods for killing a man of Windibank's height and weight that would appear in a coroner's report as death from natural causes. Windibank had stumbled away from the table, grey in the face, and Joanna had had to rush after him to be certain he wasn't going back to his house before she could get Mary out of it. 

"I was highly motivated," says Sherlock. 

"Why?

"She's my client." A note of dismissal, as though this is too obvious to linger on. Sherlock drinks his tea, peering at her over the rim of his cup. "It upset you, earlier."

Something cold washes her stomach. "'It'?"

" _I_ upset you."

She almost says _no_ out of habit. When, exactly, did she fall into the habit of shielding Sherlock from the consequences of his obtuseness? She feels oddly reluctant to lie about this, but if she says _yes, you upset me_ Sherlock will want her to explain why and she certainly doesn't have the energy for that. In the end, she says nothing, and Sherlock takes it as confirmation.

"I'm sorry," he says. His tone is stiff, but there's apology in his eyes. It's obvious that he has no idea what he's apologizing for, but he's unhappy that she's feeling hurt, which is--something. A kind of tenderness, at least. 

"Thanks," she says. "And I'd rather not talk about it."

Sherlock frowns. He drops his gaze, redirecting his scowl at the violin. Joanna reaches blindly for her tea, realizes her hand is trembling, and sets it back down again. 

If Joanna's honest with herself, she doesn't care about Sherlock knowing--what he knows. She wouldn't even have minded him asking her about it one day. But she'd thought he'd go about it differently. She'd thought that, if he ever brought it up, he'd do it out of some sort of clumsy concern for her, clumsily being the only way he knew how to do concern.

She never thought he'd use it against her like a weapon. Or, more accurately, like a six year old child who finds a loaded gun under his parent's pillow and starts waving it around with no idea of the damage he might do. Which, come to think of it, was also a fairly accurate assessment of Sherlock with a gun.

Joanna's never told anyone about the way she grew up before. It always seemed like too heavy a weight to ask someone else to carry, unless that person was in it for life, and there's never been anyone remotely like that, apart from Sherlock. But Joanna's always fantasized that when she finally chose to share that piece of herself with someone, it would redeem the past in some impossible way. She hadn't taken Sherlock's limitations properly into consideration. He can be gentle and kind and almost frighteningly protective, but he's never quite grasped that emotional wounds don't heal on the same schedule as flesh wounds. 

Her hands aren't shaking simply because he knows. Her hands are shaking because Sherlock as good as said he blamed her for not standing up to her father. As if she could have. As if Sherlock had the slightest idea what he was talking about. She would be an idiot to take what he'd said to heart, because she knows he didn't have the first idea that it would make her feel like this, sick and small and ashamed. 

But he's her best friend. Like it or not, everything he says is important to her. And he'd only said what Joanna's thought herself a thousand times over the years.

She's sunk so deeply in her reverie that it takes a few seconds before she realizes that the strange noise in the background is actually Sherlock speaking to her. She blinks and turns her head. Sherlock is leaning towards her, a frown line deepening between his eyes.

"Sorry, what?" she says.

Sherlock leans back in his chair. "I said your name three times and you didn't respond." His gaze narrows. "Your hands are trembling."

"Yes, I have an intermittent tremor, they do that."

"In one hand. Not both."

"Actually, they're both known to do this, it's just been awhile."

"How long?"

Joanna thinks. "Eleven years. Before I joined up."

Sherlock's face screws up. "Eleven years ago and now tonight? Why?"

If she needed confirmation that Sherlock has a massive gap in his understanding of human beings, his inability to make such a simple connection is certainly proof. Lestrade, even Donovan, would see it in an instant. But if she points this out, it will only put him in a foul temper. She needs to sleep, now, before exhaustion and strain make her even more fragile, before one of them says something that will add even more damage to the night's tally.

"It's not important," she tells Sherlock. "It's late, I'm for bed." 

Joanna stands up, takes a single step, and curses as her sore leg buckles underneath her. The other leg is shaky, like the rest of her, and can't take her whole weight. She ends up in a heap on her knees at Sherlock's feet. Sherlock jumps, eyes wide, and reaches to support her.

"What is it?" he demands. "Are you hurt?"

"No," she tells him, her face reddening. "I'm fine."

"You're obviously not." 

"Well, no, my leg's a pain in my arse, but that's not news." The sigh she heaves is meant to sound exasperated, but it's so ragged around the edges not even she can pretend it doesn't sound more like a sob. "I'm sorry, I'm just--"

"Just what?" He sounds, she thinks, just the tiniest bit frantic.

"Just--" Her throat closes. 

Before she can think better of it, before she can remember things like her pride and Sherlock's utter cluelessness, she turns to press her head against Sherlock's knee. Her hand comes to rest on his leg, and she feels the tense muscle of his calf under the fabric of his trousers. He's so warm, and Joanna thinks how long it's been since she had the comfort of another person's body heat mingling with her own. A low, miserable noise escapes from her throat, and she discovers just how badly she's depleted her reserves when no flicker of embarrassment follows.

Sherlock says her name. His voice is hushed, frightened. She tightens her grip on his leg, knowing she'll have to get up and walk away in a moment, trying to absorb as much warmth and comfort as she can. Sherlock's hand touches the top of her head, a hesitant, flickering gesture. He strokes the length of her hair down the back of her head. He does it again, his fingernails scratching lightly against her scalp. Joanna shudders with relief and escaping tension.

"You should. The floor, your leg. It's not good." Sherlock's voice is hoarse. "Let me help you. To the sofa, at least."

She makes a non-verbal noise which Sherlock must interpret as assent, because he stands up and hauls her to her feet. She sways a little, and he holds her to his side for the few steps it takes to reach the sofa. 

She sits, and he sits down beside her. Suddenly, the embarrassment she was holding at bay returns unabated, and her whole body locks in the paralysis of self-consciousness. She covers her face with both hands. Sherlock clears his throat.

"You could. Lean on me again, if you wanted. I didn't mind. The, um. hair thing, it seemed to relax you. I could keep doing it."

Joanna breathes out a laugh. "It was very relaxing, yeah."

Sherlock doesn't hesitate this time. He stretches his arm across her shoulders and tugs once, hard, so that she almost topples into him. He winds his other arm around her waist, and Joanna allows herself to go boneless against his chest. She lies with her ears pressed to Sherlock's sternum, feeling his heartbeat reverberate in his thoracic cavity. Sherlock's hands settle lightly on the back of her neck, carding through the hair at her nape. She shuts her eyes for a moment and relaxes, wondering how badly cross-wired she must be, if the only person in the world who could hurt her as badly as she's been hurt tonight is also the only person in the world she ever wants to comfort her like this.

"You said I wasn't to come near Mary." Sherlock traces her hairline behind her ear. "You said you weren't going to let me tear her heart out."

Had she said that? "Forget it."

"No." His hand grows still. "Did I do that to you?"

"Leave it, Sherlock."

"Answer me."

Joanna lifts her head. Sherlock is looking down at her, his eyes dark and worried. 

Joanna pushes herself upright and leans in to kiss him.

At the first brush of her lips against his, Sherlock's eyes flutter shut. He reaches for her immediately, cupping the sides of her face in his hands like he's been waiting for this, like she's just given him something that he'd wanted and didn't know he could have. But after a minute or so he pulls back, breathless, and puts his hands on Joanna's shoulders to keep her from following. He looks at her through the riot of curls tumbling over his forehead.

"I can't," he says hoarsely. "Not now."

Just like that, the warm tangle of their limbs is no longer a refuge. It's hostile ground that she's blundered into blindly, without a patrol at her back. Shock is all that keeps her from bolting. 

Slowly, with all the dignity she can muster, Joanna pushes away from Sherlock and gets to her feet, cautious of her legs. Sherlock is standing beside her in almost the same instant, trying to tuck her arm into his, but Joanna fends him off. She'd been sluggish half an hour ago, but now every nerve and muscle in her body is twitching with shame, and she could run a marathon if it meant she could outrun her mortification.

She adjusts the collar of her blouse and takes a step toward the staircase. Then she stops and speaks without turning her head.

"What changed?" she says. "Between you snogging me against the door two days ago, and tonight?"

There's no reply, only a silence that gets heavier with each passing moment. Joanna unbends far enough to glance over her shoulder. Sherlock is staring at the floor, shoulders stiff and hunched, his face unreadable.

"Right." She laughs, a little wildly, under her breath. "Right."

Joanna finds her room on auto-pilot. She sits on the edge of the bed, then lowers herself stiffly to the mattress. In a huddle atop the bedclothes, she sobs breathlessly for five minutes or so. Then she pushes herself upright and swings her feet over the side.

Through the air vent in the floor, Sherlock's violin playing rises, a thin, plaintive howl from below.

Joanna wipes her face with her hand and arranges her features as though she were being watched. Then she bends down and tugs her army duffle from under the bed. She can still fit very nearly everything she owns into it, but she only packs what she'll need. She changes clothes, putting away her trousers and her blouse, donning jeans and a heavy jumper over a shirt. She trades her trainers for boots and tucks a knife into the top of the left one. She debates whether to bring her gun and laptop and decides to leave both. 

Ten minutes after she entered it, she leaves her room with the duffle over shoulder. The music from the sitting room doesn't break or halt, and Joanna makes certain to close the front door of 221 as noiselessly as possible.


	8. Chapter 8

8.

Joanna meant to go to Harry's. She really did.

It didn't quite work out that way.

*

It's four in the morning and Joanna has been walking for an hour before she realizes that she can't go to her sister. Harry is drinking again, and Joanna can't bear Harry drunk. She's flippant and smug and reacts to things without actually listening to them, because she can't have a conversation with another person without performing, without reducing them to the level of an audience. Joanna can deal with that when she's strong, when she's herself. Not tonight. She's holding on to her composure by her fingernails and Harry doesn't know how to handle delicate things.

It's odd, really. If anyone had asked her yesterday who her friends were, Joanna could have named a dozen people without thinking. Starting with Sherlock, of course, always. But when she asks herself, _who can I go to?_ there isn't a single name that occurs to her. 

There are people who would take her in, willingly, maybe even gladly, but no one she could bear to be near right now. This is a problem.

Or not, possibly. She'd left the cane back at the flat, but she's walking with no trouble at all. Funny, that.

*

At five in the morning, three hours after she left the flat, Joanna powers her phone off so that no solicitous government employees can track her by GPS signal. Not until dawn does Joanna realize that the route she's walking isn't entirely random. A long time ago, Sherlock taught her how to work her way through the city from Baker Street without coming to the attention of a single CCTV camera. The route terminates at Vauxhall Arches. She doesn't linger there; Sherlock's homeless network is too loyal to be bribed into silence regarding her whereabouts. But she does trade coats with a teenage boy, and she gives him a tenner for his flat cap. With her collar turned up, her hair tucked under the hat, and her point of origin concealed, she figures it will be difficult for anyone watching the CCTV to pick her out of a crowd. She keeps as much of the military out of her stride as possible.

Odd. She'd been exhausted a few hours ago, and now she can't imagine anything but this: keeping on, moving forward.

*

At noon, Joanna finds herself near a tube station. This is around the same time she remembers that, yesterday, she'd promised Mary Sutherland that she'd come see her, help her with anything she needed, listen if she wanted to talk or just keep her company if she didn't.

It makes Joanna feel ashamed--not the wild, cringing shame she'd felt when Sherlock had pulled away from her, disgusted by her weakness, but a real, grown-up shame that comes with the realization that she's fucked up properly. Here she is, carrying on like the world's ended, when poor Mary Sutherland's got wounds that haven't even begun to bleed yet. 

She's got a choice now: go back on her promise to Mary and leave her feeling even more abandoned and betrayed than yesterday, or keep the promise, and show Mary what she had to look forward to in twenty years' time. Not to mention the risk of Sherlock finding her. He knew she was supposed to see Mary today, and he may well have called her and found out where she was staying. Men aren't permitted in the building, but Sherlock is very convincing in drag.

Joanna finds herself boarding a train at random, simply to kill the time. She turns her phone on, intending to text Mary. Her inbox is 80% full. Most of the texts, predictably, are from Sherlock.

_Where are you?_

_When did you go? I never heard you leave._

_You don't work at the surgery anymore, in case you'd forgotten._

_Get bread. And milk. And 60 ml hydrogen peroxide._

_Why aren't you answering me?_

_Are you angry with me?_

_Why are your clothes gone?_

_You left your laptop._

_You left your laptop and your gun._

_Tell me what's wrong._

She can almost hear Sherlock saying all those things. He'd sound puzzled at first, then irritated, then worried. For the last three messages, he'd use the clipped, hurried voice that means he's borderline frantic. It's simultaneously no more than she expected and nearly too much to bear. 

She diverts herself from the Pavlovian need to reply to Sherlock immediately by looking at the messages that aren't from him. Five texts from Harry, which Joanna skims and deletes, two from Lestrade ( _You all right?_ and _Please give me a call when you get the chance_ ) and one from Mycroft ( _I take it that Sherlock made a display of his customary tact and delicacy yesterday evening?_ ). 

She considers replying to Lestrade, but he's a bit cannier than Sherlock when it comes to certain things, and therefore the more to be avoided at the moment. Joanna texts Mary instead. _Something's come up and I can't come over today. Are you settled in ok? Need anything?_

The reply comes a minute later. _I'm holding on._ It isn't very reassuring and does nothing to alleviate Joanna's guilt, but then, she deserves the guilt. She powers her phone off again and rides the train to the end of the line, trying not to let herself be swallowed by the memory of the five blissful minutes of last night when Sherlock held her and stroked her hair and looked at her with soft, baffled eyes.

When it's dark outside, Joanna emerges from a station five or six stops down the line from where she started. She checks her phone again, and is unsurprised to find a fresh wave of texts. She thumbs down the screen to read them in order, her gut tightening like a fist.

_On further consideration it is clear that you have misinterpreted the events of last night._

_One rejection does not equal absence of interest._

_You would see this if you weren't an idiot._

_Have phoned Lestrade. He says you aren't you answering him either._

_Come home._

_At least confirm you are unhurt._

_Physically I mean. I know that I hurt your feelings._

_I should probably say I'm sorry._

_Fine, don't reply. I'll find you myself._

_Are you reading this?_

_I will find you. I'll burn London to find you._

Joanna shuts her eyes. She remembers when Sherlock last said that to her, a few days after he'd rescued her from Philip Martin. Sherlock had lain his head in her lap and wept, devastated because Joanna saw him for what he was. She's never seen anything so beautiful, so heartbreaking as Sherlock had looked in that moment. _I'll burn London to the ground,_ he'd promised, and she had believed him.

It's getting colder, darker, and later every minute, and soon she'll have to make up her mind what she's doing tonight. She''s got to kip somewhere, after walking all day and not sleeping last night. And she really _has_ to say something to Sherlock, if only to reassure him that she's alive. It might not stop him coming after her, but it isn't fair to leave him wondering whether she's unwilling to talk to him, or actually unable.

She wishes she could go back to Baker Street. The world feels like a very big, cold place at the moment, and she feels very alone in it.

But it's too soon to see Sherlock again. She'd left Baker Street so she'd have a chance to collect her thoughts, to collect herself, but she feels just as fragmented now as she had last night. All her walls have fallen, and there's no limit to how badly Sherlock could hurt her when she's so undefended. Even though it's not about avoiding pain, really. It's about protecting, not just herself, but the both of them, what they have with each other. 

Because Sherlock hates to see her in pain. And he doesn't know how not to hurt her; there's no point pretending otherwise. It's Joanna's job to warn him off when he crosses the line. If she can't do that, if she can't be anything but his victim, Sherlock will eventually see the damage he's doing, and he'll start to shy from her. Distance will spring up between them, a silence, a gulf. Joanna thinks that would be worse than anything. Worse, maybe, than giving away pieces of herself that no one should be without.

A gust of wind brings hot tears to the corners of her eyes, and Joanna ducks her head as she trudges down the pavement. It's not fair, she thinks, it's not fair how bad they are at loving each other, when it's the only thing that's important.

*

It's ten at night, and Joanna sits in the same late night cafe where she'd brought Mary just 24 hours ago. She's wrapped her freezing hands around a mug of tea. When she can feel her fingers again she turns her phone back on. There are no new texts, because Sherlock has filled up her inbox, but there are still a half dozen messages she hasn't read, from Lestrade and Mycroft and her sister.

Joanna deletes the oldest messages, and composes one to Sherlock. _I'm alive, but I need space._ She hits send.

Lestrade's three messages are slightly more alarmed-sounding than the texts he'd sent earlier that morning. _Did Sherlock do something? Do you need help? / You can talk to me, you know. I won't tell Sherlock anything if you don't want me to. / He's off his head right now, if that's any consolation._

 _Nothing like that,_ Joanna types, replying to the first message, equally to stop him worrying about her and to stop him entertaining suspicious thoughts about Sherlock. Not that Lestrade is likely to suspect Sherlock of anything worse than he'd actually done, but if the detective inspector is hit by a bus tomorrow, and the message is read out of context, it won't do Sherlock's already dubious reputation around the Yard any good.

Mycroft's messages run as follows: _My brother has what amounts to a positive genius for standing in his own light. / If you require assistance I am happy to provide it. Sherlock need never know._

Joanna finds it ironic that she's being offered help with virtually every problem except the one she actually has. She doesn't bother replying to Mycroft's message.

Sherlock's reply text arrives then. _You can have all the space you want here in the flat. Come home._

It makes Joanna smile a bit, but she turns her phone off without answering. He's clearly not in the mood to be reasonable, and anyway, if she were ready to talk to him at any length she'd be able to just go home.

*

By midnight, Joanna is so tired that she can barely drag one foot after the other. The only reason she's still upright is because she's done some math in her head and come to the conclusion that she simply can't afford a room for the night, not on an unemployment budget. She's got one and a half paychecks to last her for an indefinite period of time, and it's too ridiculous to splurge on a hotel room when she's got a flat to go back to. 

Joanna turns her phone on again and ignores the new text notifications. She scrolls down the list of names in her address book, imagines what she'd say if she dialed any of them: _Hi, it's Joanna Watson. Sorry it's so late. Would it be all right if I stayed at your place tonight?_ She knows that virtually anyone she called would say yes. And she really must call someone. To do otherwise would be a juvenile failure of basic self-care, a histrionic gesture worthy of getting her sectioned.

She's not sure if an honest, if moronic, lack of planning has brought her to this point, or if, on some level, she always meant to end up like this. She's not acting like a doctor or a soldier, but like a kid of fifteen who doesn't know how to get on in the world. Except that she was smarter than this when she was fifteen. She'd stood up straight and walked out of her father's house never to return, and survived from that point on with a lot of hard work and the help of friends. The walking out bit, she's remembered how to do, but she's apparently forgotten the rest of it--how to trust other people not to sneer at you when you're low. If her best friend hadn't just blamed and rejected her for having been her father's victim, Joanna might not be having so much trouble. But then she wouldn't be here in the first place, so there's no point to that line of thought.

Joanna opens her unread text messages and skips past the new ones from Sherlock and Lestrade. There's one from Mary, sent an hour ago. _There's a woman screaming in her sleep down the hall from me. I don't want to be here anymore._

The dam cracks, and Joanna's hand clenches on the phone. She begins to sob, loud and helpless. She ducks blindly into an alley and tucks herself on the far side of a skip, away from view of the street. Dropping her duffle to the pavement, she sinks down, drawing her knees up to her chest, and cries herself to sleep.

In the last moments before conscious thought fades, Joanna thinks, _I have to be better than this. For Mary, for myself. I have to help us both. God knows who else will._


	9. Chapter 9

9.

Sheer exhaustion allows Joanna to sleep for almost four and a half hours. She dreams that she is still awake, that men with knives are prowling towards her down the alley, and she wakes herself up by fumbling for the knife in her boot. As dawn approaches, the city begins to come to life around her, busily, fragrantly, noisily, and when a lorry parks near the mouth of the alleyway, the whine of the brakes and the hiss of escaping steam brings Joanna fully awake in a second. She climbs to her feet, hearing half a dozen distinct pops and a variety of lesser creaks as she stretches her bones and muscles. She's as cold and stiff as she's ever been in her life. Her nose is running, and her throat is so dry as to be sore. She desperately needs to stand under a stream of hot water for at least half an hour, or maybe for the rest of her life.

Before she can stop herself, she starts wondering what sort of night Sherlock has spent, whether he slept at all (ludicrously unlikely), whether he'd paced and fretted and sawn the violin in half (slightly more likely) or whether he too was out there in the darkness, searching for her. She wishes she could think of a message she could send that would calm him, but she's never been much of a liar and the truth would only upset him more.

Joanna adjusts her clothing, runs her fingers through her hair, and walks a few blocks to the cafe she'd visited the night before. She buys herself a cup of tea and a pastry, then goes to the loo to wash her face and comb her hair. When she looks into the mirror she's appalled by the whiteness of her face, the depth of the shadows under her eyes. No one would believe her now if she said she was fine, the evidence to the contrary is written on her too plainly.

She stays at the cafe for an hour, then takes the tube to the stop nearest Harry's flat. She's got a key, and, more importantly, Harry will have left for work by now. Joanna lets herself into her sister's home, showers, steals Harry's dressing gown, then collapses in her bed to sleep some more. Joanna doesn't wake up until after two in the afternoon, and when she does she feels as though she's swimming in the haze of an exceptionally pleasant drug. Clearly, she's been a civilian for too long if she's already forgotten the deep narcotic bliss of getting proper rest after living rough and running flat out for days on end.

Once she's removed all traces of her presence from Harry's flat (not that Harry would mind her being there, but Joanna doesn't want to answer the inevitable questions) Joanna goes to visit Mary at the shelter. There's a small walled garden in back of the building, and they sit on a bench together, clutching paper cups of tepid tea. 

"I haven't really--" Mary blinks sightlessly into the middle distance. "It hasn't quite sunk in yet, I don't think. I try not to think about it more than I have to. I doubt I'm ever going to be able to think about it without making myself sick."

"I think you will, one day." Joanna turns a little and peers down at Mary. It's a grey, misty day, and she's left off the dark lenses. The bruises under her eyes an exact match for Joanna's. "Even our happiest memories, the ones we try to hold onto, fade over time. He's not always going to matter as much as he does now."

"I feel like someone's died. Is that mad? I feel like Edward." Mary chokes. "Died, and my step-father killed him."

"Not mad at all. That is what happened, in a sense." Joanna looks down into her tea. "I got your text last night. Did you get any sleep at all?"

"Not much. But the new term starts in a few days, and I've got permission to move back into the dormitory early, so I'll only be here one more night."

"I'm really glad to hear that. It helps, being somewhere welcome and familiar." 

Mary falls silent for a moment, fidgeting with her tea cup, the hem of her shirt, the ends of her hair. She's clearly working up to saying something, so Joanna sits quietly and waits for it to come out.

"Do you think I made a mistake, not going to the police?" she blurts at last.

"What? No. I mean." Joanna fights for composure and reminds herself that this isn't Sherlock she's talking to, Mary doesn't need to have the logic behind basic emotional courtesies spelled out for her like a primer. "It's not for me or anyone else to decide what's right and wrong in this case. Your well-being is the most important thing, and you're the best judge of it."

"It's not, though."

Joanna frowns. "What do you mean?"

"My feelings aren't more important than." Mary stops and swallows hard. She looks hard to her left, concealing as much of her face from view as she can. "I mean. If he was going to hurt someone else. Stopping that would be more important than my feelings."

Joanna opens her mouth, then shuts it. Her heart starts to beat a little faster, and she can feel the tingle of adrenaline in the tips of her fingers. "Is that a random observation, or do you know something?"

Mary bows her head. Her pale hair sweeps forward, veiling her face. "I don't know what I know."

"Your instincts are probably very sound, where he's concerned." Joanna fights to keep control of her voice. It wouldn't do to push too hard, or sound too eager. "I'd listen to them if I were you."

"There's a girl on my street, Sariya. She's three years younger than me. We were sort of friends, before I went to uni." Mary hesitates, her breathing a bit too quick. "Jamie used to talk to her a lot, when she came over to see me. I wouldn't think anything about that, but one day last week I was taking a walk, and I saw him standing outside her house, talking to her through her bedroom window. When he saw me he acted as if he'd just stopped to pass the time. But that's--I mean, she's fifteen, what's he got to talk to her about?"

"Right." Joanna nods. "Fair question." She can feel her spine straighten, as though of its own accord. The muscles in her arm tighten as her right hand becomes a fist. "Listen, don't worry about the police for right now. I'll look into this a bit and see what I can find out. It might be nothing, and we don't want to upset your friend."

Mary nods. They say good-bye a few minutes later, and Joanna is surprised when Mary hugs her. It feels like more consideration than she deserves. She promises to stay in touch, and strides out of the build at a quick clip. There's a buzzing in her head, a narrowing in her field of vision that she remembers from walking patrols. 

She has really been unpardonably idiotic. Not in the way Sherlock accuses her of being. This is exactly the sort of thing Sherlock doesn't see or think of once a case has been resolved, he's no good at the follow-up, the tying of loose ends. That's supposed to be Joanna's field, but she missed this, because her head's been full of static. She hasn't been thinking like herself. She's been locked in the small room in her head where she's still a victim, still small and powerless and frightened. It had taken Mary's courage, Mary's insistence that her feelings were less important than doing the right thing, to remind Joanna that she's not powerless in the least. James Windibank is not her father. She doesn't owe him love or loyalty or any of the things that get in the way of justice. James Windibank is a pathetic, cowardly, grasping little man. Joanna had forgotten, or Sherlock's words had made her forget, that he isn't the enemy at all.

He's prey. Properly, lawfully the prey of a woman who devotes her life to catching criminals. 

This is what she needs. If she wants to go home, to make things right between her and Sherlock again, she needs to do the job that's in front of her. Then, and only then, can she stand up straight, defend her perimeters, put him in his place when he's out of line. Sherlock had hurt her, and instead of holding him accountable she'd played the girl with him, turning to him for comfort instead of making him see what he'd done wrong, making him put it right. It's an old familiar pattern of behavior she learned when she was a small girl, when she'd let her father wipe away the blood he'd spilled. She'd loved him for his gentleness in those moments, loved him so much that she made herself forget that it never lasted. He'd been both the villain and the prince in her own private fairy tale, and she'd grown addicted to being rescued.

And, God. That's true of her and Sherlock, too, isn't it? Sherlock, who can't bear it when she's kidnapped and knocked about, brilliant Sherlock who for all his genius never seems to be able to keep it from happening. Of course he couldn't, not when Joanna plunges headlong into danger, exposes herself to risk _on purpose_ because there's nothing as sweet, as rewarding, as the moment when Sherlock comes charging in to save her. What had started as an unavoidable side-effect of solving crimes had turned pathological at some point. How had she not noticed? She'd let Philip Martin stalk her for weeks and never told Sherlock because she only felt at ease in the world when she was in danger. There's a wound in her so deep and old she'd forgotten it, failed to recognize that in every brush with destruction she was putting a plaster on a bullet hole. It's the source of the static. She'd mistaken the symptom for the disease.

But she's outgrown all that. She's not a little girl anymore, even if she feels that way sometimes. It's just as well, because this is a woman's job. Not a man's, it's not a chance for Sherlock or anyone else to ride in on a white horse and play the hero for Mary, for Sariya. Only a woman can teach James Windibank that a girl is as fully human as he is, that there are consequences for meddling with them. And that's not being a hero at all. It's just setting the balance right.

Maybe Sherlock does understand that on some level. He'd told her ages ago that he wasn't a hero. And for all his ego, he doesn't actually look for praise. He'd dismissed Joanna when she'd congratulated him for frightening Windibank. _She's my client,_ he'd said, which was as much as to say, I did my job, what else could I have done? And he never expected Joanna to fawn over him when he pulled her out of a desperate situation. He was only ever frightened and angry and frustrated that it had happened in the first place. And that was...good. She hadn't seen it before, but now she's glad, because it means that two very important things are true: this twisted dynamic that's sprung up between them doesn't make Sherlock any happier than it makes Joanna healthy, and they have a common ground to hold them together, if they can just clear it of all the thorny brambles that have hidden it from view.

It means that when she fights for herself, she's fighting for both of them. It means they can be together, without sacrificing things she ought to hold onto.

She'll probably never find the right words to explain this to Sherlock, but that's all right. They're both better with actions. 

*

It's dark again when Joanna finishes the reconnaissance work she's set out as the day's mission.

She'd found Sariya Baloch's house by the same method Edward Darcy had used to insinuate himself into Mary's good graces--she'd rung the bell of another house on the street and pretended she was a school teacher come to visit her student's parents. She'd been helpfully redirected, and she'd parked herself in an unobtrusive spot to watch the girl's house for a few hours. She'd exchanged texts with Mary, who'd given her information about Windibank's habits, and accordingly she was prepared when he came jogging down the street at five in the afternoon.

Sariya hadn't made an appearance, but Windibank had slowed as he approached the house, clearly hoping to catch sight of her. He'd looked around at the empty street, then walked up to a window and peeked inside. He'd left a few minutes later, looking disappointed, but not before Joanna had taken a series of photographs with her phone, clearly illustrating Windibank's deliberate approach.

The next step involves a certain degree of risk-taking that probably only proves how completely and utterly she's wired wrong, but Joanna figures that, at this point in her life, some things are never going to change, so she might as well use it to get results. 

Because she's not Sherlock, and she's also not the police. She doesn't care about the mystery, she doesn't have to worry about proper procedure. Soldiers, doctors, women, they're pragmatic about certain things. They have to be. If you spot the enemy, if you isolate a pathogen, if you find out some tosser is messing with your kid, you neutralize the threat and go back to living your life. Results are all that matter.

Joanna nips into a 24 hour copy shop and loads the sim card from her phone into one of the printers. She feeds coins into the slot and the machine prints out clear glossy images, one shot of Windibank after another. She tucks the pictures into her jacket and sets back on foot to Mary's neighborhood. Patricia Hambleton and James Windibank go out in the evenings, to the pub or to see a film--they're regular as clockwork, according to Mary.

Joanna lets herself into their house, using the least intrusive of the three methods Sherlock had so helpfully described two nights ago. She climbs the stairs and walks down the hall, past Mary's room, into the master bedroom. She opens drawers until she finds what she's looking for. She leaves the photograph on top of James Windibank's boxer brief collection.

She lets herself out of the house, carefully locking the door behind her.

If he was frightened two nights ago, he'll be frantic in a few hours. Panicked, and just desperate enough to do something incredibly stupid, with the right provocation.

She goes back to the alley near the cafe that night. Sleeping rough isn't nearly as demoralizing when it's done for a purpose. It's a bit like being back in Afghanistan, if Afghanistan smelled like a pile of festering lager bottles and Chinese takeaway boxes.

As she drifts off to sleep, it occurs to her that she hasn't checked her text messages today. But that's just as well. She misses Sherlock far too much not to give into temptation and say something she'll regret.

*

"Oi!"

Joanna's eyes open, and she reaches automatically for her boot.

"Easy, just--put that back so I can pretend I didn't see it, all right?"

Joanna blinks. Her fingers uncurl from the hilt of her knife. "What are you doing here?" she says, rather stupidly.

"That's what I fucking well wanted to ask you." Lestrade is dressed for an off-duty day in jeans, jumper, and a leather jacket. He kneels rather cautiously on the pavement and looks at her with wide dark eyes. She can tell he's already taken in the duffle holding most of her meager possessions, along with the state of her hair and clothes and the knife in her boot. 

"Well, I was sleeping," she says. "For future reference, that's not the best way to wake a veteran with combat stress."

"I didn't know you was asleep at first, did I? You've been missing 48 hours, I've been bracing myself for your body to turn up for the last twelve." Lestrade's gaze is steady. "Are you hurt?"

"No, not at all."

"Right." His mouth works for a moment. "Have you been sleeping out here the whole time? What the hell were you thinking?"

Joanna decides that there's no short answer she can give to that question, so she stays quiet.

"Anything could have happened to you! It's not like you're Jane Smith from the neighborhood, you've got enemies! Ugly blokes who'd like nothing better than to stick you in the back while you're sleeping. Did you forget about all of that?"

"Look, I wasn't planning to end up like this, it just sort of happened." Joanna runs a tired hand over her face. "I lost my job a few days ago, and I needed--not to be near Sherlock for awhile, and--"

"You said in your text that he didn't do anything." Lestrade's voice is abruptly cold, in a way that bodes Sherlock no good.

"He didn't, he just said some stuff--he didn't drive me off or anything. I left on my own."

"You couldn't call someone? You got a sister, don't you?"

Joanna glares at him. "Sherlock knows where she lives. Sherlock knows where everyone lives."

"So why the hell didn't you call me?" Lestrade is not getting any calmer. "You honestly think I'd let him near you if you didn't want it? Or do you know me at all?"

"Greg." She feels silly, and slightly ashamed of herself. "I've not really been in my right mind for a couple of days. I'm sorry I worried you. I wasn't thinking straight."

Lestrade let out a loud sigh. He hangs his head for a moment, then looks at her. 

"All right," he says. "Here's what's going to happen. We're going out to my car. I'm going to make a call and stand everybody down. Then, you either come home with me, or I'm charging you with vagrancy and bunging you in a cell for the night. Got that?"

Pride wars with the part of Joanna that knows this isn't about her really, it's about making it up to Lestrade for the strain of the last two days. Reluctantly, she nods. Lestrade looks vastly relieved, as though he'd expected her to put up more of a fight. He stands up, then gives her a hand, and Joanna allows him to tug her to her feet.

"I could eat first, though," he says, and Joanna has a sneaking suspicion that the suggestion has less to do with how hungry Lestrade is, and more to do with how she looks at the moment.

"Better make that call first."

"Yeah." He takes his phone from his pocket, then stops. "Do you want me to call Sherlock? I can't stop him finding out once I've talked to my team, but I can keep him a distance if you want."

"No." It's Joanna's turn to sigh. "It's fine, you can call him. Just tell him I'm safe and I'll see him soon."

"Will you?" Lestrade arches an eyebrow.

"I hope so." Joanna smiles weakly. "I'm working on it."


	10. Chapter 10

10.

They eat a late dinner at a Thai place two streets over from Lestrade's flat. The woman who takes their order and the boy who brings the food to their table both know Lestrade by name. Joanna is accustomed to her dining companions being overly familiar with restaurant staff, but in Lestrade's case the familiarity exists only because he eats there so often, not because the owners owe him some sort of favor. They certainly don't eat for free, although their coffee, after the meal, is on the house. Lestrade hurries to point out that every police officer who eats there gets free tea and coffee, because the till's been robbed twice in the last year and the owners have decided that they quite like having coppers about. Lestrade seems oddly nervous that Joanna's going to decide that he's on the take because their dinner bill is two quid cheaper than it should be. Joanna would pat his hand comfortingly if she didn't know that it would make him turn the color of beet root.

"Look," says Lestrade, after their food arrives. "I don't pretend to understand exactly what the two of you have going on. But for whatever's it worth--" Lestrade looks as though what he's about to say is physically painful to him. "Sherlock cares for you. More than I used to think he _could_ care about another person. Whatever happened the other day--well. Sherlock feels guilty about it." Lestrade pops a dumpling into his mouth, chews, then shrugs. "Probably not as guilty as he should, but still, it's something."

"It never crossed my mind that he didn't care for me," says Joanna. Impossible to eat pad thai with chopsticks if you have any dignity at all. She gives up and switches to the spring rolls. 

"Right. I'll just stop trying to help then, shall I?" Lestrade shoves a loaded fork into his mouth. 

Before Joanna can think of a reply, Lestrade's phone rings. He looks at the name on the screen, rolls his eyes, and answers. "Hello, Sherlock."

Joanna tenses automatically. Lestrade meets her eyes and gives her a little nod, as if to say, _don't worry, I've got this._

"Yeah, she's fine. Yes, really. Well, that's her business, isn't it? No, I didn't say--what the hell makes you think--fine, yes. No. I'm not doing that. Because she's got a phone, Sherlock, she'll be in touch when she's ready to be in touch. Absolutely not-- _don't you dare._ " Lestrade's voice goes abruptly chilly. "Why? Because you don't force yourself on a woman when she doesn't want to see you, that's why! Didn't anyone teach you this stuff?"

Joanna's remaining appetite vanishes abruptly. 

"Sherlock, you had better listen to me, because I'm as serious about this as I've ever been about anything. You come near my flat tonight, and I _will_ arrest you." A pause, followed by a look of deep exasperation on Lestrade's face. "Because I know you. Don't play innocent with me, you can't pull it off."

Joanna reaches out to touch Lestrade's sleeve. "Greg, maybe I'd better talk to him."

Lestrade covers the mouthpiece of the phone and looks at her. "No, not like this, not when he's being a prat. You didn't want to talk to him before, if you talk to him now it'll be because he's manipulated you." Lestrade puts the phone back to his ear. "Just shut it, Sherlock. Jo is safe, that's all you need to know."

A second later, Lestrade thumbs the phone off and puts it back in his pocket.

Joanna rubs her eyes. "So he's coping, then."

"Like a pro." Lestrade grins at her, then tosses his napkin on the table and takes out his wallet. "Let's settle up and get a move on, you look done in."

*

When they reach Lestrade's flat, he takes Joanna's bag from her and leads her to the single bedroom. He grabs a blanket from a chest against the wall and wishes her a good night, before heading to the couch. Joanna is too dumb with exhaustion to protest, and anyway, she knows it's an argument Lestrade is too stubborn and kind to lose. She plops herself down on the lumpy mattress and stretches out, acutely conscious of the fact that the sheets smell like their usual occupant. It's been a long time since she slept in another person's bed, or cared enough to be affected by it if she had.

As she waits to drift off, Joanna finds herself fantasizing about a different kind of life, one in which the smell of her shampoo would mingle in the sheets with the scent of Lestrade's aftershave. It would be a nice life. Lestrade is warm, and safe, and _easy_ , in a way Sherlock will never be. Joanna suspects that, if she were a slightly different person--less damaged, more settled, more normal--they might have been happy together. A part of her could almost be sorry that things didn't work out that way.

But she is what she, and she can't be any different. She's never wanted safe, never looked for easy. She and Sherlock fit together in a way she's never fit with anyone before, in a way most people, even most couples, never fit with each other. They're compelled by one another, in a way that erodes any consideration of self-preservation or common sense, and their need for each other will always be greater than the pain they bring one another. They are the opposite of safe. 

Joanna's seen couples like that before, usually in the form of women who come into the surgery with cracked ribs and black eyes and men who sit in the waiting room with guilty eyes and haunted faces. No matter the damage, they can never walk away from each other, because it would mean leaving the biggest part of themselves behind. 

The fact that Sherlock would never hit her doesn't mean there isn't a danger of them going down that road. Sherlock's never going to give her a black eye, but that just means the wounds he can inflict are the kind that don't heal so easily. This, what Joanna's doing right now, it's the only way she knows to stop that happening. It will be worth if, if it works. But it will only work if Sherlock is able to learn from the silence and distance she's putting between them. And the terrifying thing is that there is nothing she can do to help him learn. If he doesn't get it on his own, then he'll never get it at all.

The display on Lestrade's bedside clock marks minutes, then hours, before Joanna realizes she's not going to sleep anytime soon. She sits up, puts her feet into a pair of slippers that are much too big for her, and pads out of the bedroom and down the hall. By the light of the muted television, she can see the lump that is Lestrade, curled up on the couch beneath his fuzzy blanket. Apparently his subconscious has already accepted Joanna's presence in the flat as part of the expected array of night time noises, because he doesn't stir when she slips past him into the kitchen. She makes a cup of tea and goes outside to the front steps. Perhaps the part of her own subconscious that permitted her to sleep in the open, as though she were in the army again, will be soothed by the sight of the sky overhead, and she'll finally be able to sleep in a proper bed.

Joanna sits with her knees tucked up to her chest and wraps her hands around the tea cup. She listens to the sound of traffic, the footsteps of other late night wanderers. She hears a brush of fabric against fabric, and something about the sound registers as homely and familiar. She looks up.

Sherlock jerks to a halt on the pavement and stares down at her with wide eyes in a ghostly face. He backs up a step, then freezes, his mouth hanging open.

"Christ," Joanna hisses, heart pumping wildly.

"I'm sorry." Sherlock backs up another step, his hand out before him in a placating gesture. The expression he's wearing is odd. It's open and vulnerable and very nearly frightened.

"Are you mad?" Joanna keeps her voice low. "Can't you just for once in your _life_ \--do you have any idea how much trouble you'll be in if Greg catches you? He wasn't joking about arresting you."

"I know he wasn't." Sherlock's word comes out at a hurried clip. "I never meant. That is, I didn't come here to--" He breaks off, looking miserable and strangely flushed.

"Didn't come here to what?" Joanna demands.

"I wasn't going to bother you," he says. "I know you don't want to see me, but I needed to see you. That's all, I was only going to look, so I'd know you were really all right."

It shouldn't make Joanna feel any better. She shouldn't treat it as anything more than an excuse for Sherlock doing what he always does, demanding his own way regardless of anyone else's wishes. Except that he looks so genuinely unsettled, as though he's afraid of her and what she might say or do.

"Greg told you I was fine," she points out.

"Lestrade knows that if you were hurt, nothing would stop me finding you. I didn't trust him to tell me the truth." He swallows, his throat moving beneath his scarf. "Donovan said Lestrade found you sleeping behind a skip. She said you'd been there all this time. I couldn't deduce what might have happened to you, there were too many variables. Not knowing was--I couldn't bear it." The last three words leave his lips awkwardly, as though he only let them escape by accident. 

Joanna heaves a sigh and gives her pet lunatic a closer look. Now she's paying attention, she can see the wrinkles in the normally paper-smooth drape of his trousers, the crumpling of his cuffs and collar. There is a stain on his shirt, a pale discolored blot that's just visible in the glare of the street lamp. To a stranger, Sherlock would probably still pass as immaculately groomed and tailored, but to Joanna, these small evidences of disorder are as good as a neon sign advertising Sherlock's mental state. Put together with his uncharacteristically subdued tone and faltering speech, and she can't help believing that his distress was acute.

"I'll go," says Sherlock. "I'll go now if you want." He hesitates, then adds, "but if you're willing to hear it, there's something I want to say."

Joanna doubts that she would have been able to turn him away, even if he hadn't waited for permission, but the fact that he's asking--for once in his life, actually _asking_ \--is enough to make her forget almost all her objections. "All right," she says.

"I took the girl's case because of you." Sherlock very nearly blurts the words. "Or--no, that's not precisely true. I had the girl to the flat because the case looked interesting over email, but after I heard her story I was going to send her away." Joanna opens her mouth, furious, but Sherlock holds out his hand again. "I don't mean--I mean that I was going to refer her to Lestrade. I didn't see the point of getting involved personally, but then I--" 

A line appears between Sherlock's eyebrows, and he hunches his shoulders in a way that always makes him look half his age. "She made me think of you. Mary Sutherland. I thought what it must have been like for you at her age, and I couldn't send her away. Because she was alone, like you were alone, and I can't go back in time and kill your father, even though I have dreams about doing that, good dreams, so I thought it would make me feel better if I went after Windibank. But then you said--what you said, about leaving it to Mary to decide, and I didn't know what to do after that."

Joanna hasn't breathed since Sherlock confessed to killing her father in his dreams. She stares at him, wide-eyed, tea going cold in her hands. Sherlock who has been looking at the pavement, at the steps, everywhere but at Joanna, looks at her then, like he's checking whether it's all right for him to go on.

"I knew you'd be upset when it all came out," he says. "But I thought you'd be happy in the end, when we caught him. Only we had to let him go, and you were upset, and then you kissed me, and I _wanted_ to, Joanna. I _always_ want to. But you said that I'd hurt you, and it made me afraid to touch you, because how can I touch you if I don't know how not to hurt you? It's as though you've been stabbed or shot, but I don't know where the wound is, so I don't know how to be careful in the right ways." Sherlock drags a hand through his already wild curls, until they stand practically on end. "All that night, I tried to work it out. Finally I decided just to ask you, because it was taking too long and I wanted to put it right. But. You left. You left, and I couldn't find you, and Lestrade couldn't find you, but then he _did_ find you, and I couldn't--I couldn't stay away. I should probably say that I tried, but I didn't try, I just waited until I wouldn't be bothering you. But you're here, and I'm bothering you anyway." He swallows again. "I'm sorry."

Joanna stares down into the milky tea, which has begun to skim over in the cold. She blinks at it a few times. Her chest feels like a balloon that's filling with helium, and she has to concentrate very hard not to let herself simply float away. 

"Do you want to ask me now?" she says.

"What?" Sherlock looks as though, whatever he'd expected her to say, this wasn't it.

"Do you want to know what it was you said?" _To hurt me,_ she leaves unspoken.

"Of course not. I'm not stupid, I know what I said."

Joanna gapes at him. Sherlock rolls his eyes, and for some reason that familiar gesture of impatience is almost comforting.

"You had a profound reaction when I said that your father died before he could be punished," Sherlock tells her. "What I don't understand is _why_ you reacted as you did. It was simply a statement of fact."

"That's--Sherlock, that isn't what you said."

"It isn't?"

Joanna covers her face with one hand. Then she lowers the hand, sets her tea cup aside. She squares her shoulders and looks up into Sherlock's baffled face.

"What you actually said was, 'You never exposed your father, and he died and got away with what he did to you.' Those were your exact words."

Sherlock's baffled expression doesn't clear up. If anything, he looks more confused than before. "I don't see the distinction."

"Well, at the time, I was pretty certain that you were telling me I was to blame for my father hurting me, because I didn't try hard enough to stop him."

Sherlock's face goes blank with shock. He stares at her for a few seconds. When he speaks again, his words come out in an indignant sputter.

"But that's absurd!" he says. "You were a child, how could you possibly have stopped him? Joanna. Joanna? Joanna!" Abruptly, Sherlock drops to his knees in front of her, apparently oblivious to the detrimental effect the pavement is likely to have on his trousers. Their faces are almost level with each other, and she can see that his eyes are as wide as they've ever been. 

"Stop crying," he says desperately. "Either stop crying, or tell me I'm allowed to touch you, _please_."

Joanna can't talk. Even if she could talk, she doesn't know what she would say. But Sherlock, apparently at the end of his already limited supply of patience, doesn't wait. He seizes her and wraps long arms around her neck, pressing her head into the shoulder of his coat. Joanna's world darkens and narrows to the feel of rough fabric against her face and the scent of damp tweed and stale cigarette smoke.

"How could you think I would think that?" Sherlock's voice, muffled against the top of her head, is plaintive, the words uncharacteristically imprecise. " _How_ can you be such an _idiot_?"

Joanna lets out a laughing sob. "Learned from the best."

Sherlock's fist clenches in the back of her borrowed dressing gown. "Come home," he orders.

"I can't, Sherlock."

"Why?" Sherlock pulls back and looks down into her face.

"I can't disappear from Greg's flat in the middle of the night, and I'm not waking him up at two in the morning to explain." Joanna sucks air into her lungs and wipes her face with the back of her hand. "You go home. I'll call you tomorrow."

"You're not coming home tomorrow, either?" Sherlock looks as though he's going to crack apart under the weight of his frustration.

"I don't know. Probably. Maybe. But I'll call you either way." Joanna gives him a watery smile. "I've got a case. Could use your help."

Sherlock frowns, but before he can say anything, they both hear the sound of footsteps approaching the door. Joanna tenses and shoves Sherlock back. 

"Go, before Greg sees you," she says. "I mean it, go!"

A stubborn expression crosses Sherlock's features, and for a second Joanna really thinks that he intends to stand his ground and rub it in Lestrade's face that he'd ignored orders and got what he wanted anyway. But then his face softens, and he nods once. He sets off down the pavement and rounds the corner just before the door to the building opens, and Lestrade peers outside in search of her.

"The hell are you doing out here, it's freezing!" Lestrade rubs his arms and glares down at her. "Come on, up you get. Christ, you're a lot of work, you know that?"

Joanna lets him chivvy her up the steps and into the flat again. She stumbles back to her room and falls onto the mattress, where the scent of Lestrade's aftershave mingles with the damp tweed and cigarette smell that clings to her still.


	11. Chapter 11

11.

Joanna doesn't sleep for very long after Sherlock's departure. It's as though the gears in her mind that have been churning endlessly over her problems (the Sherlock part of them) have finally ground to a halt, and without that distraction, there's no longer any reason to wait. She's got work to do.

It's still dark when she climbs out of Greg's bed at five. (She's made the conscious decision to stop thinking of him as Lestrade and start thinking of him as Greg, now that she's slept between his sheets and entertained regrets for the life they might have had together). 

She shucks off the clothes she borrowed from him, along with the intimacy created by wearing them. He'd taken care of her for a time, made her feel safe, and she'll always be grateful to him for that, but she's got no business clinging to softer feelings, not today. Today, Joanna Watson goes back into the kill zone. 

She writes Greg a note before she leaves. She scrawls it in the semi-darkness of his bedroom, instead of pausing to compose it at his kitchen table. She can't risk lingering where he might hear her; she doesn't want him to catch her leaving if she can avoid it.

_Dear Greg,_

_Thank you for taking me in last night. And dinner, and--all the rest of it. You're a good friend, and I'm lucky to have you._

_I've got stuff to take care of today, and tonight I'm sorting things out with Sherlock for good and all. I'll be fine. He can learn, you know._

_I expect I'll see you soon. I'm not going to wake you just now, because I know you need the sleep._

_Don't worry about me. I promise, you don't need to._

_Fondly,  
Jo_

She leaves it tucked under his tea kettle, and slips out of his flat with all the silence and stealth she can summon. Which is quite a lot. Some lessons the army teaches you, you don't unlearn.

*

Joanna's first stop of the morning is James Windibank's neighborhood. She doesn't think of it as Mary's, because it was never her home, just her prison. Mary will be moving out of the shelter and back into her dormitory today. That's a bit of good news, a bit of something to buck up Joanna's spirits. Whatever happens, whatever Joanna risks now, Mary will be well out of it. That's the best result she could hope for, at this point. There's still a great deal at stake where other people are concerned, but Joanna thinks she can be forgiven having specific loyalties. As Sherlock would say, Mary was their client. They had a duty to look after her, and now she's safe. Joanna is going to deal with Windibank, but that's just a bonus, and she's going to look after Sariyah Baloch, even though the girl is nothing but a name to her, just a stand-in for the dozen other girls just like her that Windibank would destroy in the course of an unchecked career. Neither the girl nor Windibank mean anything to her personally, not like Mary, but that's another lesson the army teaches you--how to do the job even when you aren't personally invested.

Joanna is committed. That's all she needs, to end Windibank.

When Windibank drives to work that morning, Joanna is waiting for him. Right in the same spot she'd photographed him from the day before. With the canniness of a true predator, he's sussed out the vantage point that made him vulnerable, so he slows as he passes, keeping an eye out. 

Joanna doesn't need to gather more intelligence, so she doesn't try for invisibility this time. In fact, she does precisely the opposite: she stands there and deliberately lets herself be seen. Windibank's eyes meet hers as his car pulls past Sariyah Baloch's house. Joanna's head turns slowly to follow him. Windibank averts his face--almost immediately, but not quite fast enough. Joanna _knows_ that he recognized her. He'll not have forgotten her, not when she was standing at Sherlock's right hand the night he was threatened with ruin and exposure.

When Windibank is gone, Joanna sits on the bench across from Sariyah's house just long enough for Windibank to reach the investment firm where he works. Then she phones his secretary, just to confirm that, yes, Mr Windibank did come into the office this morning, and does she want to be put through to him?

Joanna considers saying yes, saying hello to Windibank, just for the pleasure of making him sweat, but she's pretty sure she's already got the message across. She'd only wanted to know that he hadn't doubled back to his house after seeing her.

She walks back out to the main road and strolls along until she finds a tube stop. There's a bit of a spring in her step, a jaunty little air that would have been unthinkable two days ago.

It's well beyond obvious that she's wired wrong, at this point. But that's okay. Self-awareness is all she needs to keep herself being blind-sided again. There is a difference, tactically speaking, from playing the target and playing the victim. She's not suicidal, she's just ever so slightly reckless. The difference is that, this time, she's not going it alone.

Well, not entirely. 

If Sherlock figures out exactly what sort of game she's playing, he won't be happy, but she'll deal with it. And if he doesn't--well. What Sherlock can't deduce is hardly going to kill him.

*

Sherlock is sitting on the couch, limbs sprawled but more or less upright, when Joanna walks through the door about an hour later. He looks up at her, and the surprise in his face is genuine. Joanna's chest clutches a little, in sympathy and worry. She doesn't like to think just how out of sorts Sherlock must be, not to have recognized her tread on the stair.

"Joanna." Sherlock is on his feet immediately. He takes a step toward her, then stops, obviously at a loss how to proceed. His hands twitch, like he wants to walk straight up to her and wrap her in his arms, but he stays still and waits for a cue.

Joanna shuts her eyes, just for a moment, and breathes in the formaldehyde-tea-dust scent of their flat. Of partnership and adventure and adrenaline. Of Sherlock.

When she opens her eyes, Sherlock is precisely where he was. She continues not to speak, mostly out of curiosity as to how long Sherlock can bear the silence. It takes him about five seconds to crack.

"You came back," he says. He sounds uncertain, as though he hasn't yet sussed out what that means.

"This is where I live," says Joanna.

Sherlock smiles. It's a tiny smile, but it's one of his real ones, and it speaks of relief and contentment.

"Welcome home," he says.

*

Joanna showers, long and enthusiastically, reveling in the use of her own shampoo and bath products. She conditions her hair and blow-dries it, shaves her legs, and afterwards lingers uncharacteristically long over what to wear. She settles on a pair of comfortable canvas trousers, fitted enough not to snag on anything but loose enough for easy movement. She layers a tight, dark blue jumper with a deep V neck collar over a white sports bra. For her, this is practically going-out-on-a-date levels of sartorial meticulousness. The fact that her ensemble is also appropriate to running, jumping, and brawling on the ground with ugly blokes twice her size probably says rather more about her than her mother would ever have wanted to know.

Joanna stands before the mirror and studies what she sees. A plain, comfortable face, preserved from outright homeliness by regular features and bright eyes. She passes for pretty when she wears make-up, but she can't remember the last time she bothered. Her hair is getting long; grooming standards for women in the army aren't as rigid as they are for men, but off-the-collar is non-negotiable. Some women she knew kept their hair long, pinned up on the back of their head, but Joanna could never be bothered with that even before she joined up, so she'd kept it clipped just past her ears for the first three months or so after she got out of the hospital. Since then she's let it go a bit, and now it's almost to her shoulders. She's never mucked about with coloring it, which she thinks actually makes her look younger than Harry, who relentless bleaches their genetically-conferred mouse fur color into an almost natural-looking blonde. But Harry's always fretting about keeping up with the grey strands that resist the coloring, whereas Joanna's more plentiful grey blends quite naturally into the dishwater color. 

She's 37 now. She's taken a bullet, and more beatings than she can count. There's a puckered scar on her right shoulder, a knife scar in her left thigh, and an almost surgically-thin scalpel scar that bisects her torso in a jagged line. Her breasts have always been small, and she's always been the sort to keep them put away until they're wanted. She's always been relentlessly average in height and rather more muscular than is strictly feminine, but she's never completely regained the muscle mass she lost after the bullet and she knows now that she never will. 

Depending on the sort of expression she pinned to her features, she could pass for someone's mum now, easily. There was a time once, before she enlisted, with Mark--their much-discussed but theoretical sprog would be in the fourth grade now. That's another thing she'll never have now, but she's rather more resigned to that. It was always more Mark's dream than hers.

Finally, Joanna tears her gaze from the mirror and looks down at her upturned palms. She can see the gun callous there, rather smoother than it had been a year ago, the groove along her left forefinger that told Sherlock she'd been a surgeon, the way the striations along his finger pads had told her he was a violinist. She thinks about the lives she's saved and the lives she's taken, the encampments she's built and torn down, the engines she's taken apart, she stories she's written. 

She remembers kneeling on this bed a month ago, staring down the barrel of her gun, and Sherlock taking the gun from her hands before capturing them between his own and kissing each knuckle separately, like they were each unique and precious to him.

_You forget what you're capable of. What you've made of yourself, with these hands._

Her father has been dead for almost twenty years now. Her mother, more than ten. Everything Joanna had ever valued about Harry had disappeared into the bottle before Joanna became a doctor. She is what is left of her family. 

All in all, she thinks she hasn't done too badly for herself.

Joanna turns briskly, takes the Browning from her bedside table drawer, and tucks it into the back of her trousers. Her jumper's too tight to cover the bulge, but when she goes out, she'll be wearing a jacket.

She shuts her bedroom door behind her and thumps down the stairs. Sherlock is sitting on the couch still, tapping away at his laptop. He looks up when she walks into the sitting room, and his eyes widen slightly, taking in all the nuances of her appearance that will communicate as much to him as anything she might say with her lips.

Joanna walks up to him and shuts the lid of his laptop. He blinks at her, but doesn't complain.

"Go and get changed," she tells him.

Sherlock tilts his head back, tugging unconsciously on the lapels of his dressing gown. "Are we going somewhere?"

"Not just yet, but I want you on your toes. Go shower and put on some real clothes. I'll have tea waiting when you get back. You can even have another nicotine patch, as long as you're still using the 10 milligram ones."

Sherlock stands, slowly, and looks down at her, obviously not missing the bulge of the gun. "You're planning something," he says, musing, abstracted.

"You've got as long as takes you to pull yourself together to deduce it, before I tell you. Honestly, your hair--did you shower once, while I was gone?" Joanna flicks a stray lock from Sherlock's forehead, and he twitches minutely at the brush of her fingertip against his skin.

"There's something different about you," he murmurs, still not moving. "What is it, is it this--case you mentioned last night?"

"Maybe," says Joanna. "Maybe it's a lot of things. Why, is it important?"

Sherlock straightens. "Everything about you is important," he says, then walks off to do as he's been told.


	12. Chapter 12

12.

Joanna is just carrying the tea back into the sitting room when Sherlock emerges from his shower. He's dressed, and his dark hair is limp and damp. 

She puts his mug down on the table beside his armchair, then sits in her own. Sherlock studies her for a moment before he walks forward and, rather stiffly, seats himself. His fingers curl around the ends of the armrests. 

"Well?" says Joanna, leaning back a bit and crossing her legs.

Sherlock's mouth tightens. He reaches for his mug and studies her across the lip. "It's to do with Mary Sutherland, obviously."

"Yes."

"More specifically, James Windibank."

"Yes, very good."

Sherlock's eyes narrow. "You were watching him while you were gone. Not just aimlessly wandering the streets."

"To be fair, I did a good bit of wandering."

"You felt lost, so you wanted something you could fix."

"I asked for a deduction, not a psychoanalysis."

He smiles. "I'd have been a good psychiatrist."

"You would be the worst psychiatrist in the history of recorded time, Sherlock," Joanna tells him flatly. "People need therapy _after_ they've talked to you."

Sherlock sniffs and puts his cup down. "You stopped seeing your therapist after you met me."

"I'm an exceptional case."

"I'm very much aware of it."

They look at each other for moment, both of them putting on a slight glare. Sherlock, uncharacteristically, is the first to relent.

"You've discovered a weakness of Windibank's that we can exploit. You're calm, verging on smug, so you've already made a start and judged it a success. You want my help for the next, probably final, phase of your plan." Sherlock drums his fingers against the wing of the chair. "It doesn't follow, however, that my help is something you actually _need_."

Joanna feels a ripple of surprise, a faint sting of hurt. "You don't want to help?"

"I didn't say that," Sherlock answers quickly.

"Oh." She relaxes a bit. "Strictly speaking, I probably could carry it off on my own. But it would be risky."

"I fail to see why that would stop you when it never has before." Sherlock's grim expression prevents her interpreting this as an intended compliment.

"Yes, that's rather the point."

"I don't understand." The annoyance in his eyes bears out the truth of his statement.

Joanna averts her gaze. She's not entirely certain it's wise to take Sherlock into her confidence about this. He might misinterpret her, or read it as an accusation. They're on shaky enough ground as it is, after the events of the last few days.

But at the same time, she knows that they're never going to move forward in the way that they need to, unless Sherlock understands at least part of it, and unless she trusts him enough to help him understand. If they're really and truly partners, it's as important for them to know each other's weaknesses as it is to know their enemy's. Still--she's never even tried to talk about this part of herself before. Well, she had with Mark, a bit, but it hadn't gone very well and she'd never brought it up after the first time. She hadn't thought it mattered, somehow. She'd thought they could be together, be married, even, without it ever having to come up. It seems like a glaring oversight now, and it stuns Joanna slightly to realize that she's working at her relationship with Sherlock in a way she'd never worked at her relationship with Mark, even though they aren't even together in any conventional sense.

But then, in the final evaluation, she'd been able to picture her life without Mark. She can't imagine her life without Sherlock. At least, she doesn't want to.

God, it is vital that she gets this right. She sighs and cards her fingers through her hair.

"What happened, two night ago." Joanna hesitates. "When you--said what you said. And when we--afterwards. I had a bad reaction."

"I noticed." Sarcasm without humor. Sherlock watches her steadily.

"I shouldn't have reacted like that, though. It was out of proportion. I thought it over while I was away. I thought long and hard about--stuff I've avoided thinking about for a long time. I came to understand some things that, frankly, I ought to have sussed out a long time ago."

"That can't be a new sensation." Sherlock smirks.

Joanna rolls her eyes. "Do you want me to tell you this or not?"

"Sorry."

"This isn't easy, you know." 

"I know. I _am_ sorry. Please continue."

Joanna looks at Sherlock suspiciously, but there's nothing but detached courtesy in Sherlock's face and voice. He's peering at her over steepled hands, almost as though she were a client, an interesting one, giving the details of a case. She's been on the receiving end of most of Sherlock's moods and sides, but she's never before been the object of his professionalism. It's oddly soothing, and she takes her cue from it. She can be professional about this too. Treat it less like an autobiography of her badly cross-wired heart and more like a diagnostic report on a patient with a similar history.

She takes a deep breath.

"Growing up--like I grew up." She makes a helpless gesture with her hands, to show that it's beyond her to name it any more precisely. "It does funny things to your head."

Across from her, Sherlock grows very still. There's a hint of uncertainty, mixed with avid curiosity, about his eyes

"I mean, I'm sure it's different for everybody. But for me, it was a bit. Um." _Professional. Detached._ She clears her throat. "I think that there's something that happens, when you--when you're used to being treated a certain way from really early on in your life. I think your self-preservation doesn't develop the way it does for other people. It's like--if you grow up normally, it gets sort of built into your view of the world that you're important and worth being taken care of. But if it happens--the other way round, then you sort of grow up thinking it's normal for people to hurt you, even if it's not normal for anyone else to get hurt. You're the exception. Someone can hurt you, and it doesn't feel like any--rules are being broken, as long as it's just you."

She's been staring at her knees since she started, but she risks a glance at Sherlock before continuing. She finds his gaze locked on her, eyes dark and glittering, face bone white. His expression is unreadable. She takes a shaky breath and goes on in a rush.

"Then you grow up, and you begin to realize that the way you feel about yourself isn't exactly normal. But you can't just make up your mind one day that, yes, you have a _right_ to be treated with basic human decency, not when there's part of you that's still six years old and doesn't really believe it. So you try to convince yourself. But it turns out, the only thing that's _really_ convincing is when other people look at you after you've been hurt and--react in the right way. If they're shocked, or angry, or sad, then they're feeling things for you that you never quite learned how to feel for yourself. And it's--sort of an incredible feeling, that confirmation. It's like alcoholics who sober up and start eating properly, they get a high off their body's reaction to having proper nutrition for the first time in years. It can be quite--addictive, that feeling."

Joanna trails off. She looks at Sherlock tentatively, examining his face for some indication of how much of this he's getting.

Sherlock lowers his hands and lifts his chin. "Interesting that you would call it an addiction," he says. "Based on your description, the only means of obtaining the high is to incur risk or encounter harm. If you have little sense of self-preservation to begin with, I imagine the degree of acceptable risk you are willing to encounter while chasing that high must be truly extraordinary." There's a dry, ironic note to his voice, as if to indicate that Joanna's definition of "acceptable risk" being absurd and borderline suicidal was a fact of which he was not previously unaware. 

Joanna stares and blinks, then releases a long breath and settles back into her chair a degree or two. "Yeah." She feels both relieved and unsettled by how well Sherlock apparently _does_ understand her. "That's sort of--exactly what I was trying to say."

"You had post-traumatic stress long before you went to Afghanistan. In fact, it's how you ended up there."

"Well, getting shot certain didn't help." It's not a denial. But then, he's not wrong.

"You didn't correct Mycroft when he told you your anxiety disorder was a misdiagnosis."

"Hardly seemed to be his business, especially since he seemed to know everything else about me."

"He thought your condition was a disguise for adrenaline addiction, when it was the other way around." Sherlock smiles thinly. "He'd be mortified if he found out."

Joanna decides not to tell Sherlock that Mycroft probably knows by now, after her texts to him earlier in the week brought her NHS files to his attention. She doubts Sherlock would be happy about that.

"I wasn't disguising it consciously," she points out. "If I'd been doing any of it consciously, I probably wouldn't have ended up sleeping behind a skip just because you brought it up. It blindsided me."

Sherlock flinches. Very slightly, and he covers it by plucking at his sleeve, but she sees it all the same.

"Anyway," she says. "The point, I guess, is that now I know I'm doing it, I'm a bit--embarrassed, actually. It's not how grown-ups are meant to deal with things, is it? I mean, the life we lead is risky, and I'd not trade it for the world." Is it her imagination, or do Sherlock's eyes brighten, when she says that? "But I take it too far, and it's not right. It's certainly not fair to you."

"What do you mean?" Sherlock frowns.

"Making you worry all the time." _Because I feel loved when you worry about me,_ she doesn't say.

Sherlock's mouth twitches slightly. He looks at the ceiling and doesn't speak for a moment.

"I suppose," he says carefully, "that there's a certain irony in the fact that I wish to protect you because of my feelings for you, and you choose to risk yourself because of your feelings for me."

Joanna stops breathing.

Sherlock looks down at her again, and the lines around his mouth tense. "Or have I misinterpreted?" he asks, in a soft voice.

She shuts her eyes and clenches her hands tightly. "No," she says. "You're quite right."

They both go quiet and start avoiding each other's eyes. If this were a movie, Joanna thinks, the only proper response to that exchange would be for them to fling themselves at each other and begin snogging madly. But they're real people, and English, so they sit silently, and eventually Joanna sips her tea.

"Have you ever talked to anyone about your childhood before?" Sherlock asks after a moment.

Joanna frowns. It's not the sort of question she expected. "I tried once. With Mark."

"The man you were seeing in medical school to whom you nearly got engaged."

"I never told you that!"

"Joanna." Sherlock gives her a chiding look.

"Oh God, why do I even bother." Joanna rubs her forehead.

"What was his reaction?"

"He didn't know what to do. It was a bit much for him to take. I only told him because--he was the first person I slept with, and I was a bit skittish, and he got rather offended. I thought he deserved an explanation, but in the end he didn't want to hear it, so I just pulled myself together and got over it." For a definition of "getting over it" that involved a lot of fakery in bed, at least, but she's not telling Sherlock that.

"'Didn't want to hear it'," Sherlock repeats in a flat voice. "He was offended because your history of abuse interfered with his getting off, and when he learned the reason, he not only recoiled but forced you to pretend that your sexual trauma had no effect on your sexual relationship."

"Yes, well, we didn't end up engaged after all, did we."

"His behavior was unconscionable and a form of abuse in itself."

"Sherlock." She flushes miserably.

"You know I'm right." His expression is set in rigid lines. "He's the sort of man for whom riding crops were invented."

Joanna shakes her head and then, abruptly, bursts into giggles. After a moment, Sherlock's mouth twitches and he joins in. Its like opening a window and breathing in the fresh air.

"Thank you, by the way," Joanna says, when they've settled down again. "You've been good about this. I appreciate it."

Abruptly, every trace of good humor vanishes from Sherlock's expression. "Your standards are so low as to render your compliment meaningless."

"It's not meaningless to me."

For the first time since they first sat down, Sherlock looks as though he might be about to get out of his chair and--do something, she doesn't know what. Instead, he sits back again, and she watches his mouth work for a moment before he speaks.

"Loathe as I am to admit it, I can feel some sympathy for him," he says. "He was selfish and cowardly, but it isn't an easy thing to feel this--helpless. I can't kill someone who's already dead. I can't protect you without imprisoning you. But you make me wish I could." Sherlock hesitates, then looks her squarely in the eye. "You make me want to rewrite history."

Joanna's mouth tightens. After a second, she covers it with her hand. Then she takes her hand away, and she nods.

"You've done something to provoke Windibank, haven't you?"

Joanna blinks and shakes her head. Her heart is pounding in her ears. "What?"

"You've threatened him. And you've let him know it was you doing the threatening. That's why there's a risk, because the only way you could be sure of drawing him out is if you frightened him enough to make him think he stood to lose more by remaining passive than by acting. It would have to be a considerable threat to make him take the risk, and you had to present yourself as a target for his retaliation, because if the source of the danger was unidentifiable he would have simply run away. You've baited him, using yourself as the bait." Admiration and distaste are both present in Sherlock's tone.

"He's about to go after another girl in Mary's neighborhood," Joanna tells him evenly. "She's sixteen."

Sherlock's eyes widen. He actually looks startled. Then his lip curls.

"Well then," he says. "I suppose we haven't any time to waste."

The predatory gleam in his eye is more comforting to Joanna than any other words of affection or vows of devotion any man has made to her in the whole course of her life.


	13. Chapter 13

13.

Joanna spends the next fifteen minutes explaining the essence of her strategy to Sherlock. She spends the five minutes after that sitting back in her chair while Sherlock stares at her, to all appearances speechless.

"This," he says finally, "is the _low-risk _version of your plan?"__

She tilts her head. "Well. I _was_ in the army. It's possible I calculate risk differently than most people."

"Because," Sherlock continues, as though she hadn't spoken, "when I deduced, earlier, that you intended to use yourself as bait, I didn't think you actually planned on lining yourself up to get _stabbed in the gut with a metal hook._ "

"That's a bit of an exaggeration, surely." 

She really shouldn't be enjoying this. But for the first time in weeks, maybe since before Philip Martin abducted her, she feels like her best self--in-control, decisive, pragmatic. There's no cloud of suspicion at the back of her thoughts warning her that she's being irresponsible, or self-indulgent. This really is the best plan she can think of, and she really has eliminated as much of the risk as possible. 

So all that's left to do is look forward to the thrill of implementing it. As soon as she's coaxed Sherlock through his snit, of course.

"We don't have a single mutual acquaintance who possesses the observational powers of a blind mollusk," says Sherlock, still staring at her with a wide-eyed expression akin to wonder. "The reason that I know this, is because _everybody_ we know thinks _you're_ the sane one."

"I am perfectly sane."

"You want to deliberately provoke a desperate man into murdering you!"

"Now, I resent that," says Joanna, mildly. "I mean, he'll try. If we're lucky. But I don't see any reason why we should consider his success to be a foregone conclusion."

Sherlock's face screws up into an expression of frustration she's never seen him wear before. He actually bares his teeth. It's extraordinary, and it lasts for some time before he can bring himself to speak again.

"I have a better idea." Sherlock points a finger at her. "I'll create a trail of evidence implicating Windibank as a terrorist. Then we'll let Mycroft kill him."

"Absolutely not."

"I don't see why."

Joanna lifts her chin. "People fear terrorists," she says. "I don't want anyone to be afraid of James Windibank. I want them to recoil from him like he's something slimy and rotten they've tracked in on their shoes."

Sherlock blinks at her. "It's fascinating that you actually had a rational response to that."

"The proofs of my sanity just keep rolling in."

Sherlock narrows his eyes. "Tell me you didn't actually consider calling Mycroft."

"No. But I did consider just walking up and shooting Windibank in the head." Joanna gives him a tight smile. "That's why _this_ is the less self-destructive option."

"You still can." Sherlock brightens. "I know how to make it look like an accident."

Joanna leans forward slightly and fixes Sherlock with her gaze. She's suddenly not in a joking mood anymore. 

"This is my mission, Sherlock," she tells him. "My case, if you like. You can help by either coming up with a legitimate alternative strategy _that I approve of_ , or by shutting up and doing as I tell you. Which will it be?"

Sherlock opens his mouth.

"Excellent." Joanna stands up. "I'll need to go and get changed. It'll take a bit of time to get myself into position. Have you been in touch with your homeless network?"

Sherlock shuts his mouth and stares at her. His fingers tighten over the arms of his chair.

Joanna studies him for a moment, then walks up to where he's sitting and looks down on him. She doesn't often get the chance to do that, and she finds she rather enjoys the role reversal.

"I am asking for your help," she tells him seriously. "But I have to know I can count on you. If I suspect you're going to hare off on your own, I'll be too busy worrying about what's happening to you to focus on what I need to do, and that will be worse than going in without back up."

Sherlock stands abruptly, crowding into her space, looking down on her from all the advantage of his superior height. "You think I'm going to put you in danger," he says, and she suspects the flat tone of his voice is concealing anger, or even offense.

"Not on purpose. But you--you're so bloody certain you know more than anyone else that you think you can do anything you want and it will always lead to the best possible outcome. But _if_ I bring you in on this, I have to trust you to communicate with me."

"' _If_ '?" Sherlock sneers. "There is no _if_."

"You said yourself I didn't really need you."

"You do if you're going to be a _grown-up_ about it." 

She knows Sherlock is only quoting her words back with a sneer to get a rise out of her, to try to manipulate her into--something, she's not sure what. But she's got her feet too solidly underneath her to give way now.

"If I have to," she tells him evenly, "I will cut you right out of this and get Greg to help me instead."

" _Greg_?" This time, the sneer isn't even a little bit put on. "Do use your brain, Joanna."

"I came quite close to sorting the whole show before I ever came back to Baker Street, Sherlock, and I'll fall back on that plan if I think I need to. In some ways, Greg would almost be preferable."

Sherlock takes another step towards her. Any closer, and their bodies will be touching from toe to torso.

"Lestrade," he says, in a low, deadly voice, "could never be an adequate substitute for _me_."

For the first time, Joanna almost flinches. There's a deadly symmetry in their thoughts, as always. She knows he's talking about more than this case. 

"I will make do," she says, matching his tone, "if I have to."

A muscle jumps in Sherlock's clenched jaw. Joanna doesn't bother trying to match the intensity of his glare. She absorbs it, radiating steady confidence back at him.

The moment only breaks when Sherlock's phone chimes from his pocket. He takes it out, still meeting her eyes, then glances down at it.

"Well?" says Joanna, when he doesn't speak.

Sherlock types a reply into the phone, then puts it away again. When he meets her eyes this time, the difference is so startling that Joanna blinks. His expression is both softer and more determined, unwavering, but less brittle. 

It's as though, in the space of a few seconds, he's transformed himself into a man who can bend without breaking.

"Mitzi, Daniel, and Ramiya are in place," he says. "They've got Windibank's location and they've started scattering the appropriate breadcrumbs."

Joanna shuts her eyes and exhales softly. She doesn't dare speak; anything she says now will give away too much. But she knows what Sherlock has done; she knows what it means, and he'll know she's grasped the significance just by looking at her. 

"Thank you," she says.

Before her eyes open again, she feels Sherlock's hands come to settle lightly on her shoulders. She remembers him saying, _how can I touch you if I don't know how not to hurt you?_ Then she feels his lips grazing her skin, high up on her cheek, close to the fragile skin under her eye.

" _Courage_ ," he says, giving the word its French accent. 

Joanna opens her eyes.

"Not that you need it," he adds, before releasing her and slipping away, head bent over the phone that's suddenly in his hand again.

*

Much later--long after nightfall--Joanna is sitting in the same cafe where she'd had her tea and washed her face after her first night sleeping rough. She's got the same kit with her she had then, and, more distastefully, she's wearing the same bulky, unwashed clothes. She can't do anything about the fact that she's bathed and slept properly since her last visit, but she's counting on her props to make her look like she's still the desperate woman she was 36 hours ago. 

In every useful way, she is.

It's pitch black outside, but Joanna spots her contact through the front windows as she approaches the shop door. Ramiya is one of Sherlock's most reliable homeless network operatives; Sherlock once described her as "moderately clever", which ranks just below "not an idiot" in the hierarchy of grudging compliments he sometimes deigns to bestow. Ramiya's age is somewhere between 25 and 30, but with effort she can pass for much older or much younger. She's well educated too, though she takes pains to deflect attention from that fact. Joanna used to wonder why she was homeless, considering, but she doesn't wonder anymore, because she understands what it's like now, at least a little. Sometimes things happened, and you just couldn't keep on trying to be part of the world. How clever and talented you were really didn't make any difference to that.

"All right, Doc?" Ramiya smiles from beneath her bright red woolly hat and slides into the seat across from her. "This is fun, yeah?"

"Yeah?" Joanna can't help smiling back. 

"Your man told us all about this tosser Windy-bank. Sounds like a creepy bloke. Helping you two do him in is what I call a good time." Ramiya sniffs, and looks over her shoulder at the teenage boy working the counter. "Oi! Tea, if you'd be so very kind."

"My…man." Joanna arches an eyebrow at her companion.

"Well, he ain't his own anymore, that's all I know. I saw what he was like when you did your runner. He had us all out looking for you, everybody in the network."

"Really." This doesn't come as a surprise to Joanna, exactly, but-- "How on earth did you _not_ find me?"

"Now don't be insulting, Doc. I had you spotted a couple of hours after I got his text."

Joanna's other eyebrow rises to join its mate. "And you didn't tell Sherlock."

"Well, you wasn't hurt. No one was bothering you. And I didn't figure you'd forgot where you lived, so I thought, it's Doc's business, if she wants a breather from Mister Tall, Dark, and Neurotic." Ramiya grins at her. 

The boy bring Ramiya's tea over. Joanna tilts her head with a rueful smile and clinks mugs with Ramiya. "Cheers."

"You two all patched up, then?" Ramiya's voice is a touch too casual, which is a style Joanna recognizes; she's used it herself on patients.

"Right as rain," says Joanna. "He's a lot less stroppy when you know which buttons to push."

"Oh yeah? What buttons are those?"

"The ones on the remote control to his shock collar, mostly."

Ramiya laughs loudly, drawing attention from all parts of the cafe, and Joanna smiles into her tea.

"So, business," she says, after Ramiya's inhaled her tea. Ramiya nods, and her tone becomes brisk and professional.

"Mitzi did the first bit this morning," she says. "Followed Windibank on the Tube, sat down next to him, casual like, then put big, scared eyes on. He asks her what's the matter, she gets all flustered, then asks if he doesn't happen to know a bird named Sariyah. He starts stuttering, then turns bright red, and she gets a fright and takes off like he's the scariest thing since Prince Charles in a tutu."

"Sounds good," says Joanna, a grim, satisfied feeling in her chest. "And Daniel?"

"Stroke of luck, there. Daniel spotted him earlier than planned. He was hanging about in a pub a few streets off Windibank's place, just biding his time, like. Tosser comes in after work for a pint or seven, and Daniel, spotting a felicitous opportunity, does something clever. He gets within earshot of our man, and starts to chatting with his mate about the latest gossip. Have you seen this mad bint, he says, she's sleeping rough but she's new to the turf, she keeps going on about this nonce who did his little girl up the bum. What nonce is that? says his friend--genuinely interested, in the way of civic-minded individuals, despite not being in on the game. Daniel says, bloke called Windbag or sumfing. Our man goes white as bone, but he listens in for a moment. And _then_ ," Ramiya leans in confidentially, displaying a row of curiously even white teeth, "he buys Danny a _pint_. Says he couldn't help overhearing, and isn't that a worrying thing, a pedo in the area, and him with a little daughter to worry about. And Daniel, to summarize, makes for fucking sure and certain that Windibank knows the mad bint in question has recently been seen fraternizing with an officer of the Met, and also that she is to be found, most evenings, kipping at the back of the bun shop at the corner of Holding Street and St Jane's Square."

Ramiya leans back, gesturing to herself with her thumbs. "Is that some effing genius strategic shite, or what?"

Joanna shakes her head, leaning back in her chair. "You lot are _brilliant_ ," she says, as sincerely as she knows how. "You are brilliant, and as soon as this is over, Sherlock's treating you all to drinks and supper at the place of your choice."

"Glad to hear it." Ramiya scoots her chair back and springs to her feet. "Time for you to get a move on, yeah?"

"That it is." Joanna takes out her wallet and puts down the money for their tea. "I honestly can't thank you enough, Ramiya. I couldn't have done this without you all."

"I can honestly say it was my pleasure to be of service." Joanna blinks, because Ramiya's dropped the rough accent, and, suddenly, she sounds like she might easily have gone to school with Sherlock--or, rather, wherever Sherlock's sister would have gone to school, if he'd had a sister. "If more people were willing to take on a personal risk to bring this sort of person to justice, my own life might have been a rather different thing."

Gobsmacked, Joanna can only look at Ramiya, open-mouthed. 

Ramiya smiles. "Get him for us, Doc," she says. "And have a care with yourselves. There'll always be more work to do. We'll need you."

*

A text chimes from the phone in Joanna's pocket as she's leaving the cafe. _South two streets, then east for one. Buy a watch._

Joanna takes to the pavement like she's on patrol, her gait falling automatically into the old rhythm. She feels like the pack she's carrying should be heavier, and her left hand twitches, searching for the sidearm she's not carrying. 

She rounds a corner and spies the man in the bulky coat, leaning into a conversation with a weedy-looking ginger bloke who probably wouldn't spot a fake Rolex unless it had Mickey Mouse on the face. They jump apart guiltily as she approaches, and the smaller man scurries off, looking at her once over his shoulder like he thinks she's about to flash a warrant card. 

"Got the time?" she asks his companion, who slinks into the shadows of the building behind him as she approaches.

"All the time in the world for a gorgeous bird like you." Sherlock winks at her from under the brim of his baseball cap. "Care to nip around the corner and view my wares?"

"I will nut you, you know. It'd be perfectly in character."

Sherlock sniffs. "What have you learned?"

Joanna summarizes the report Ramiya had given her. "What do you think? Is it enough for now, are should we wait a few days before nudging him again?"

"That won't be necessary," says Sherlock. "I've just had a text from the watcher I set near Windibank's house. He set out on foot fifteen minutes ago, heading in this direction. Apparently, your efforts today inspired him to take action."

"Oh God, really?" Joanna can't help blinking. "I thought he'd need at least a few more days to stew."

"He's been 'stewing' since the night we confronted him in the pub," Sherlock points out. "I imagine he's been nearly out of his mind since you left those photographs for him. Today's events were bound to decide him, one way or another. I wasn't entirely certain he would choose to deal with you directly, but having chosen that option, tonight is the logical time to make his move."

Joanna looks up and down the street, monitoring their periphery. "What else did you think he might do?"

Sherlock shrugs. "His only other choices were to run or commit suicide. He doesn't strike me as man whose conscience bothers him overmuch, so suicide was the least likely option."

"It never occurred to me he might run." Joanna wonders, briefly, how far she would have chased him, if he had. 

"No, it wouldn't occur to you. But most people don't have your habit of throwing yourself headlong into the fray."

Joanna bristles. " _You_ don't run, either."

"On the contrary, I've been running from things for most of my life." 

They absolutely do not have the time to get into this sort of conversation, not if Windibank really is making his move tonight, but Joanna is definitely going to ask him about that later. 

"Right," she says. "I need to go, then. You should wait at least ten minutes before you come after me, assuming you've already told the others to get into place."

"I sent the text twenty minutes ago." Sherlock glances at her. "Your hands are shaking."

Joanna swallows a curse and shoves them into her pockets. "They do that."

"You weren't planning on this tonight." His voice is steady and neutral, like he's afraid of spooking her. "We don't have to do it this way. I guarantee I can produce the desired result on my own."

For a split-second, she considers it. Because he's right; she'd thought they'd be building up to this confrontation over a few days, that she'd have more time to prepare herself mentally. 

On the other hand, there's really nothing about this she hasn't been preparing for one way or another her entire life. She squares her shoulders and shakes her head.

"My case," she says. "Remember?"

A smile ghosts across Sherlock's lips. "Your mission, you mean." 

"Exactly."

Sherlock looks at her then, sobering, until his face becomes a mask. "Are you certain" he says, slowly, "that you're prepared for all the possible outcomes of this scenario?"

"I'm not afraid of him," Joanna snaps. She doesn't like to think Sherlock's doubting her, just because she has a tremor she can't control. She _isn't_ afraid, not as most people understand the word. Triggered, yes; just the thought of Windibank triggers her, but all that means is that she's more likely to live through this, because that's what the chemicals her brain over-produces are useful for, adrenaline for rapid response time, cortisol to prepare her in case she's wounded. Her body's actually on her side for once, and it's tedious that Sherlock doesn't simply understand that.

But then Sherlock leans close, speaking into her ear, and she can feel the warmth of his breath against the side of her face, stirring the down along her cheek.

"I don't mean Windibank." His voice is low, sepulchral. "At this very moment, he is planning your murder. If any part of this goes wrong, I will kill him. I won't let him have a second chance."

Joanna twitches, and tells herself it's nothing like a shudder. She pulls away from Sherlock slightly, so she can meet his eyes.

"The difference between us, Sherlock," she says, gently, "is that you keep threatening to kill people for me. But I actually have killed someone for you. Try to remember that?"

She can't decipher the series of emotions that play over Sherlock's face. But it's clearly tectonic activity, the shifting and realignment of someone's entire world. His eyes are wide, and so open that she has to look away from them. 

"Ten minutes," she says. "I'll see you."

She walks away fast, before he can stop her.


	14. Chapter 14

14.

Joanna strides over the pavement, inasmuch as a short woman can be said to stride over anything. Her pack is shouldered, her head is down, and her back is a straight line. If not for the chill of an English spring raising the fine hairs on her arms beneath her jacket, she might easily forget where she is. Grey fogs swirls before her eyes, but in her head, she sees blue and gold. 

If Sherlock has obeyed orders and played his part as back-up, several things should be happening right now. Lestrade should be on stand-by--although she and Sherlock had agreed that he didn't need to know the details of what, exactly, he was standing by to assist with, on the reasonable assumption that he might arrest them both as a prelude to having them sectioned. And in the darkness of the alley where her rendezvous with Windibank is scheduled to occur, there should be silent watchers, ready-made witnesses to the crime Joanna has so painstakingly engineered.

As a soldier, she'd abided by the rules of engagement. As a doctor, she's sworn to certain oaths and bound by a myriad of laws. Neither profession indulges mavericks, but both acknowledge a higher law of sacrifice. An officer might risk herself in ways she could never risk those under her command. A doctor conducting medical trials in which there is a risk of death cannot use any human test subject--except herself.

She has examined her conscience, and her conscience has declared itself satisfied. Manipulation isn't the same as coercion. She's set a trap for James Windibank; but if he doesn't walk down that alley, he will not find that trap. 

Joanna has no intention of dying tonight. Ramiya's words, in the cafe, stick with her: _There'll always be more work to do._ She won't throw herself away needlessly. 

If nothing else, she doesn't trust Sherlock not to follow on sooner rather than later.

She wonders what it means that she's as willing to risk Sherlock in this as herself. Is that love, or _folie a deux_? She's made peace with the fact that she might die tonight, but she hasn't let herself contemplate what she'll do if Sherlock comes to serious harm. Per her instructions, he's the one carrying the gun. And he's got some kind of charm on his life, obviously, or he'd have been dead long ago, probably before they ever met. But if things go badly, if Windibank strikes lethally at the wrong target, she will kill him. That's not something she had to make peace with; that's simply a fact. She's not sure if it justifies her putting Sherlock in danger. She only knows that if he weren't the sort of man who would follow her into a kill zone, he wouldn't be a man she could love.

She wonders when she made peace with the fact that she loves Sherlock Holmes. She decides that this too is simply a consequence of her nature, a fact like all the rest.

*

Joanna is five minutes out from Sherlock's last location, just coming up on the corner of the street where the bun shop is located. 

The mouth of an alley, which is where she's headed, is a traditional location for an ambush. But she doesn't get that far.

Joanna only just has time to register the dark mass of the van parked along the curb before two things happen almost at once: the door slides open, and someone (male, fists, big hands) lands a punch squarely on the side on her head. Her vision goes white, and her knees buckle. Strong arms seize her from behind. 

She's too disoriented for fear, too limp for paralysis. Her face aches like something's exploded in her sinuses. The stench of sweat and cheap aftershave chokes her. Her assailant is hauling her along the pavement. She blinks, and her vision clears slightly. In the van's dark interior, there's a flash of white, a second man advancing on her. A memory rises, unbidden: her own voice, saying, _I'll make a special effort in future not to get abducted,_ and Greg, replying, _Believe it when I see it._

Joanna opens her mouth and screams. Her voice isn't high-pitched enough to produce the blood-curdling soprano screech of horror movies, but she's making noise, maybe even saying words, she can't tell. A damp, meaty hand clamps over her mouth, leaving just the one arm to grasp her waist. Joanna goes slack, becomes sagging dead weight. Her captor is completely unprepared, and she slips straight through his arms, tumbling to the ground. 

The man in white is on top of her. Joanna braces on her elbows and kicks up at him with both legs. He falls to his arse, cursing and clutching his knee.

The man who'd been holding her lunges downwards, scrambling after her over the pavement. She doesn't dare make a swing for him and risk letting him catch her wrists. She rolls, trying to get her legs beneath her.

Ahead of her, feet pound the pavement. Someone's running toward them. Joanna lifts her head; if it's a third attacker, she's done for. But a dark blur springs through the air, launching itself at the first man, the one who's still on his feet. Joanna glimpses red, and for a dizzying moment thinks that it's blood.

It's not blood. It's a woolly red hat.

Joanna staggers upright. She's still disoriented, the pain in her face intense, and her mind helpfully supplies the tentative diagnosis of a fracture to the zygomaticmaxillary complex. She sways on her feet, clutching at a lamp post. The mist in her vision begins to recede, just as a monstrous, two-headed figure lurches toward her.

It's Ramiya and the first attacker. Ramiya's riding high on his back, legs wrapped around his waist, arms around his neck in a chokehold. He's staggering, red-faced, and Ramiya's delicate features are set in an expression of fierce concentration. Joanna feels a simultaneous rush of affection and fear. Ramiya's a clever girl, and clearly no stranger to a fight. She's deploying her slight strength to maximum effect, but she hasn't got the muscle to choke the man into unconsciousness. In a few seconds he's going to throw her off.

The man in the white shirt is climbing to his feet, still wincing and holding his knee. Suddenly, Joanna recognizes him. It's Windibank. 

She doesn't pause to think. From the corner of her eye, she spots where her pack has fallen to the ground. She grabs it up by the straps and swings it in a wide arc. The pack connects squarely with Windibank's face, and he falls backwards with a surprised grunt. Joanna dashes forward and kicks him once in the side of the head, again in his injured knee. The noises he makes are highly satisfying.

" _Joanna_!"

It's Sherlock's voice. Panting, she wheels around, but it isn't Sherlock she sees: it's Ramiya, lying crumpled on the pavement, and the smelly, red-faced man turning away from Ramiya, towards her.

He's too close. She doesn't have time to do more than throw her arms up defensively, and it does about as much good as she expects, because this time he doesn't underestimate her. With brutal efficiency, he seizes her left wrist (and it would have to be her _left_ , she thinks helplessly), twists her arm behind her back, and yanks upwards, _hard_. 

Joanna fancies she can hear the crack of the bone before she feels it, but that's probably just a hallucination brought on by the agonizing pain. 

Her vision shorts out for a second time. She's aware that she's sobbing breathlessly. It doesn't hurt more than getting shot, but at least when she was shot was unconscious immediately afterward, and when she woke up, Murray had been there with a syringe of morphine. Right now, she is in complete and agonizing possession of all her faculties. 

The worst part isn't the pain. It's the fact that she can do nothing, as the man shoves her against the side of the van. She collapses into the open compartment, and he doesn't even bother to shut the door and lock her in. She understands why; he's been paid by Windibank to help kidnap her, but he doesn't give a damn about her personally. Killing her clearly isn't worth the effort, now that Windibank is unconscious. 

Ramiya, apparently, is a different matter, because he should be running away, but he isn't. He's marching down the pavement toward the girl's prone form, and there is nothing, nothing at all Joanna can do except watch, as he leans down and grabs a fistful of her hair, tugging her to her knees. Ramiya swears viciously, not in English. 

"Stop where you are."

Sherlock's voice, again, and this time Joanna thinks it must be have been a delusion all the while, because where the hell is he? Why wasn't he here before?

"If you want to live, you will release her and start running. I'll be generous. I'll give you a few hours' head start before I track you down."

Still gasping for breath, Joanna pushes herself upright and stumbles out of the van. She looks around, but the street is deserted.

"Up here." An exasperated sigh. "Moron."

Joanna, and the man, both look up. The man demonstrates his keen intelligence by looking directly overhead, into the air, as though he thinks Sherlock might be hovering there, like a silent human helicopter.

Joanna looks at the building facing them. In the shadows of a recessed first-floor balcony, she sees a charcoal streak and the oval of a white face, burning like candle-flame. Sherlock's arm is extended before him at a downwards angle, as he trains Joanna's gun at the entangled figures of the man and the girl.

"The police will be here in approximately three and a half minutes." Sherlock is using his bored voice, the one that infuriates her more than any other when they're arguing. "Windibank will be arrested. He won't pay you, but he will certainly tell the police all about you. And since neither of you had the presence of mind to locate a CCTV blind spot to conduct your business, there will be video evidence to back him up."

"Fuck you," says the man. He tugs on Ramiya's hair again; she cries out, and Sherlock steadies the gun with his other hand. But the man pulls until Ramiya is standing before him, making her into a shield.

"You are easily twelve inches taller than your hostage," Sherlock says. There's a new note of tension in his voice. "All you've done is insure that I can shoot you nowhere but in the head. I am sure Ramiya would find it unpleasant, being covered in your blood and brain matter, but I am willing to stand her the dry-cleaning costs."

"Not that fussed, really," Ramiya calls up to him, and Sherlock smiles.

Joanna's breath stops for a moment. She doesn't know why it should be so startling, this evidence that Sherlock can connect, can _care_ about people who aren't his flatmate, colleague, landlady, or brother. She knows, has practically always known, that he's as fully human as anyone else. 

It's just that he usually works so hard to hide it. Now, he isn't hiding anything.

Sirens are starting to grow audible in the distance. The man holding Ramiya tenses. He looks up and down the street.

"I'm off," he says. "The girl's coming with me. I see any coppers, I'll gut her."

Before Sherlock can threaten him, before Joanna can even think, Ramiya moves, _fast_. She twists in the man's arms, disregarding the fact that he's still got hold of her hair, and leans in to sink her teeth into his neck. He howls, shoves her back, and hits her. She falls.

Sherlock _leaps_.

The dark street floods with flashing blue lights, as Sherlock lands, rights himself, and begins to grapple with the man on the ground. Joanna can't see, she can't tell who's got the best of whom. She staggers forward, holding her broken arm to her chest, because the man said he had a knife, and she'll gladly break the other arm and both legs too before she'll see Sherlock stabbed. 

When she reaches them, Joanna seizes the back of the larger man's shirt with her right hand. Sherlock's eyes widen as he glimpses her, and she tugs with all her remaining strength. Sherlock rolls out from underneath the man, then contorts like a cat and lunges for him again. This time, he lands on top, and manages to capture the man's wrists while planting a knee in the middle of his back.

"Are you all right?" Sherlock's voice is ragged. "Christ, your face--your _arm_."

Joanna can only shake her head. She doesn't know whether she's saying, _No, I'm not all right_ , or, _No, I'm fine_. Sherlock's mouth tightens, and he looks from her, to the man beneath him, pulling up harder on the man's arms, as though venting his frustration that he won't just vanish, now he's been bested, so that Sherlock can get on with other things.

An unmarked car pulls to a halt on the street before them. Lestrade tumbles out of the driver's seat, just as two uniformed officers appear from the left. Sherlock surrenders his captive to them and straightens, climbing to his feet. Suddenly, Lestrade is beside Joanna, taking hold of her right elbow.

"Let's go," he barks at her. "Ambulance, right now, do not fucking _think_ about arguing with me."

Joanna doesn't feel particularly inclined to argue with him, but she looks over to check with Sherlock first. She's still not sure he emerged from the tussle unscathed. 

But Sherlock has already moved a few feet away. He's kneeling beside Ramiya. Joanna watches, throat tight, as he twines an arm around the girl's shoulders and pulls her into a sitting position. She's unconscious, and when he leans her back against his chest, her head lolls against his shoulder.

Sherlock looks over Ramiya's head at Joanna. He's breathing hard, and there's a bloody scrape along his forehead, a slight bruise reddening on his cheek. For the first time she can remember in all the time she's known him, he looks mute behind his eyes, as though some calm voice has finally pierced the maelstrom of his frantic cognition. 

They stare at each other for a moment. He looks slightly wild. She thinks he's never looked more vulnerable, or more beautiful.

"Take her to the ambulance first," says Joanna, when she's sure she can speak. She jerks her head toward Ramiya. "She's out cold. Basic triage, Greg."

Two paramedics with a stretcher appear just then, headed for Ramiya and Sherlock.

"The thing is," says Lestrade, steering her determinedly away, "we knew it was you two, right. So we brought _more than one_."

"Oh," says Joanna, weaving a bit. "That was sensible."

"That word loses all meaning to me when you use it." Lestrade's voice is harsh, graveled, but his hand on her back is as gentle as air.

 

*

It's a greenstick fracture. She doesn't need surgery for her arm. Her self-diagnosis of cheekbone fracture is also sound, but it's not a complex fracture, so she's x-rayed, casted, and released with scrips for enough narcotics to keep Sherlock, with his exaggerated tolerance, high for a month.

Sherlock has a few scrapes and bruises, and a dazed look in his eyes that can't be medically accounted for. He won't even hold still for the paramedics, let alone be seen at hospital. Although he does go to the hospital, where he moves like a shark in a ceaseless circuit between the rooms where Joanna and Ramiya are being examined.

Ramiya has a black eye, a sprained wrist, a concussion, and a bleeding scalp, from having her hair pulled out. Joanna has a word with the doctors about her sleeping situation, and they admit her for a week's observation. Joanna figures this will give her enough time to figure out what they're going to do for her afterwards. Whatever it is, it will be less than she deserves. Sherlock agrees, so in this, at least, he's more likely to be helpful than not.

Windibank and his contract muscle are treated for a satisfyingly wide array of injuries, and kept under guard until they can be taken into custody and charged with the assaults, attempted murders, and kidnappings of two women. Neither Joanna nor Sherlock mention Mary Sutherland's name to Lestrade, although Joanna is determined to have a private word with Mycroft, to see what his influence he can wield over their prosecution and sentencing. 

She hasn't yet begun to fight dirty. Sherlock is welcome to sulk all he likes.

*

Back at Baker Street, the second to last thing Joanna does before she surrenders to unconsciousness is text Mary Sutherland. _He's been arrested. He's going to jail. You won't have to testify._

 _I am so glad I met you,_ is Mary's reply.

The last thing Joanna does that night is put her phone away and walk over to Sherlock, who is standing in the middle of the sitting room, arms limp at his sides. He looks young and incredibly lost, as though he's undergone magnetic pole reversal, and now the hands of his inner compass are sweeping wildly around the windrose. 

Joanna's left arm is in a sling. Her right arm, she winds loosely around Sherlock's neck. She leans all her weight against the smooth plank of his chest, until she feels the point of his ridiculous nose burrow into her hair. When her knees begin to sag, Sherlock walks her the shortest possible distance to a bed, which happens to be in his room. He eases her onto the mattress, where she rolls onto her right side. Sherlock tugs off her shoes, and then his shoes, and lies down behind her, tucking himself into the sin wave of her body. He drapes one arm over her waist, careful not to jostle her sling.

"I love you," she says. She doesn't whisper.

Sherlock's other hand smooths her hair back from her brow, his fingernails scratching lightly at her scalp. Her blood sings with morphine and post-combat endorphins. Exhaustion muffles the static buzz of her thoughts. Something scientifically unquantifiable makes her feel as though her chest has cracked open, and a flock of angry jackdaws have flown away, glorying in their release.

"I will never understand what you've done to me," Sherlock says, breathing into the back of her neck.

Joanna sleeps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drop Thy still dews of quietness,  
> Till all our strivings cease;  
> Take from our souls the strain and stress,  
> And let our ordered lives confess  
> The beauty of Thy peace.
> 
> Breathe through the heats of our desire  
> Thy coolness and Thy balm;  
> Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;  
> Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,  
> O still, small voice of calm!
> 
>  
> 
> *
> 
> And that's the end of that. Thank you for all your wonderful comments, I'll try to reply as soon as I can.
> 
> Tune in...um...soon, hopefully, for Part Three of the Compatible Damage series: The Silences.
> 
> (If you're curious, this is the song for this story: http://youtu.be/NyWuA_-sJyA)


End file.
